Sydney Festival First Night & dinner at Giardinetto

Idea: Head to a Festival Event that's free

So, I have a confession to make. I've never been to the Sydney Festival First Night. Bringing the girls and the boy along with our picnic rugs we were ready to head to Hyde Park. Even though the Domain is a much better venue for events with stages, all of the acts that we wanted to see were at the Hyde Park Palm Stage. Most acts were at this stage actually. When we arrived some very strange act Alice & Alice by Cocoloco were on. We managed to get quite close to the stage, but we had a group of people standing up right in front of us. I'm not sure if the Alice & Alice act was any good, as we couldn't see it. But the glimpses that we got, and judging by what we could hear, it was a little bit weird and almost scary. And not in a good way. 

We decided that maybe some beverages would make this a bit more enjoyable, so we relocated into the over 18's area where they served alcohol and had food stalls. We found a much better spot, slightly away from the crowds. There we had some picnic ettiquette issues, which  Miss B's clears up in her blog. 

We had a view of a small section of the stage (from quite a distance) and could see the whole large screen. My recommendations would be that more speakers and screens are required. There were so many people there and I doubt that more than a handful of people could see, as well as hear, the acts going on. We decided to get some over-priced ($7.50) extremely small plastic cups of red and white wine, and the boy got a big sausage roll.

What I could see of Circa's 21 acts in 20 minutes looked good, although to be fair, I couldn't really see it. There was a Burlesque performer: Imogen Kelly, but again, I couldn't really see it. We were going to stay for Smoke and Mirrors, but by this time we were all quite hungry and looking forward to a proper bathroom. We decided (especially seeing as I have tickets to see Smoke and Mirrors) that heading down Stanley Street might be a good idea. 

We settled on the first restaurant that we could see. It was Giardinetto. It looked kind of cute and quirky, had white linen table cloth on the outside tables and was packed. We thought we had chosen well. We were placed at an inside table. The look that the restaurant is going for is old fashioned kitsch I think. Gold cupids hanging from lights, Granny-like place-mats, and very interesting painted flowers on the walls. The lamp on the table was another tacky highlight (which we found out can also double as a hat...). All of the decorations would not have looked out of place at St Vinnys.

We ordered the Nangara Shiraz ($29), which was the cheapest red wine by the bottle, with some of the other options being quite over priced. It went well with our meals, but wasn't anything mind blowing. We all had the Bruschetta ($11.50), which was a nice start. The tomatoes were freshly cut and the parmesan worked well. We discovered that it wasn't the easiest to cut (if you're sharing 6 pieces between 5 people).

Two friends ordered the entree size of the Smoked Salmon Linguine, Linguine with a mix of capers, black olives, Spanish onion and smoked salmon ($16 entree size/ $23 main size). It was extremely creamy. Neither could finish their meals because it was that rich and heart attack inducingly creamy. There just wasn't enough rocket to contrast in texture to the creamy, gluggy rest of the meal. There also weren't enough olives or salmon (as it was all on top, more as a garnish than anything else). I had a few mouthfuls, but realised that that was enough for me.

I ordered the Salmon Fillet Mediterranean, ($27) Fillet of salmon with capers, olives, cherry tomatoes and mixed herbs in white wine sauce, which I was pleasantly surprised by the presentation of. As soon as I started to eat it however, I was proven oh so very wrong. The salmon was horribly overcooked, loosing a lot of it's natural flavour in the process. The potatoes were quite nice (mainly due to a lot of butter/ and or cream) but overall I was extremely disappointed. Salmon is one of my favourite meals to cook, and this was very dry on the inside. It's why I ended up helping everyone else to eat their meals.

The boy had the Fillet Steak Giardinetto ($31) Tender eye fillet steak, 500 grams, with vegetables and a side salad. It was huge! Exactly what he was in the mood for. A huge lump of meat. But even for him, it was massive! The side salad was also huge, as it was the size of one of the other meals. I quickly helped him to eat all of it. It had a subtle olive oil and white balsamic vinegar dressing on top of tomatoes and salad leaves (mostly rocket). The boy said that the steak was good, even though it had a massive bone on it and would take a while to digest.

Another friend ordered the Duck Risotto ($20 entree size/ $26 main size), pieces of duck breast, sun-dried tomatoes and fetta in pink sauce. Again, she ordered the entree size, which also turned out to be quite large. She kept on asking her meal "hello! Flavour. Where are you?" I thought that she was being dramatic, but after tasting it, I had to agree. Even after she added copious amounts of cracked pepper and parmesan to it, is still didn't taste like very much. Where were the ingredients apart from risotto she wondered? I had a few mouthfull, but still couldn't work it out. Another disappointing meal. 

We were all quite full and underwhelmed, or as Miss B says "I'm whelmed." The dessert menu was given to us as a laminated sheet with also very underwhelming pictures. The highlight of which was the typo of "Pooched pears," that has been written over on most menus, but not all.

Top right hand side, "Pooched Pears"

It was time to leave. I can't think of any reason why I would be coming back to Giardinetto. It was all very average from the food to the service, and it was very very hot in the restaurant. There's much better Italian restaurants just around the corner from it, at a fraction of the cost.