Vanessa: A new contender has emerged on the suburban dining scene, boasting southern Italian cuisine. Rimini Trattoria is situated in the inner west suburb of Concord and offers diners traditional Italian fair at reasonable prices.
A recent Friday night outing with my fellow FFS family, Mr M and Cousin J brought us to Rimini Trattoria. When we arrived, sans booking, we were pleased and surprised that we were able to get a table with no dramas.
We were promptly delivered menus, served water and read specials. We were enticed to try the Rimini calzone with potato and cheese. ($25) This was a good serve for five people as an appetizer and had good flavor. The dough was cooked perfectly and the cheese oozed out over the potato when cut.
It seemed we were all in the mood for carb loading that night and clearly unable to make decisions between pizza and pasta, so we chose the best of both worlds. The downside of this is that we didn’t sample any of the main course on offer which sound tempting such as calabrese parmigiana or veal pizzaiola.
Between us we tried three different pastas and noted that the portions were quite generous, so much so I left with a doggy bag! Given our Italian heritage and being totally spoilt by our nonno’s pasta sauce we can be quite harsh critics but in general we were happy campers. Myself and Cousin J had the Boscaiola ($18)with spaghetti and fettuccine respectively. The sauce was rich and creamy although there was a distinct lack of seasoning which had us reaching for the salt.
Mr M had the spaghetti arrabiatta ($14)and although he too reached for the salt his feedback was positive and said the sauce was bold with the right amount of kick from the chilli.
Fellow FFSakers Bianca and Alex share the lasagna ($20) and the salt & pepper calamari and chips ($26) between them. Although I didn’t try them, the lasagna was a substantial portion, well layered and reportedly very tasty as was the calamari.
As I previously mentioned we were all up for a bit of carb loading that night so we followed our generous pasta dishes with a pizza and salad to share. We chose the crowd pleasing Capricciosa Pizza ($24) with the traditional ham, mushroom, olives and Fior di Latte toping. Great pizza base, light but with a decent crust just how I like it!
The Rimini Salad ($14) with rucola, pear, cherry tomato, walnuts and shaved parmesan had a bitey balsamic and lemon dressing, that complimented the heaviness of the carbs well.
Feeling well and truly stuffed, we were unfortunately unable to even look at the dessert menu…well somewhat of a lie, we did look but more to appease our very enthusiastic waiter. It’s a shame too because knowing the love that my fellow FFSakers have for Nutella, I know that the hand-made, woodfired nutella pockets ($15) would have gone down a treat! One on the list for next time.
If you are an inner-west local looking for a some good Italian comfort food midweek or otherwise, then do put Rimini Trattoria on your list of places to try
Enjoy!
Vanessa
V.B.A
Photos by Alex
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Rimini-Trattoria/391877837630273
omg that cheesy calzone looks amazing!
Anna and Greg, congratulations on a great review!
I’m impressed – if it gets the tick of approval from your family, you know it’s good quality Italian food, and available in the suburbs too!