PROFILE BY BEST RESTAURANTS
Proprietor and executive chef, Nino Zoccali, has embodied everything that is deliciously Italian within the space of his restaurant, Pendolino. Located on level two of The Strand Arcade, the wrought iron theme which is characteristic to the mall continues throughout the dining room. The gallery tables are filled during the daylight hours with city-siders dining upon truffled zucchini and taleggio cheese frittatas and freshly made paninis. If you need to eat and run, the express lunch menu and a pre-theatre dinner menu will help get things moving. However, if it's a lingering glass of wine after work that you require, the bar snacks menu is served from 5pm offering scrumptious morsels such as cured meats, cheeses and oysters. Main meals constitute a more sophisticated affair and reveal the true talents of the kitchen. Hand cut pappardelle served with braised White Rocks veal sauce, veal marrow and marjoram is made from scratch with organic ingredients. Char-grilled pasture-fed beef sirloin fillet with pearl barley, oxtail risotto and pearl onions is an obvious choice for meat lovers while the orange blossom and pistachio panna cotta with Sicilian citrus sorbets is a heavenly way to close the night.
While serving up Italian delights from breakfast through dinner, Pendolino also specialises in oil and wine with an area specifically reserved for tastings and classes. L'olioteca is their own brand of oil which is bottled, displayed and sold on the premises. The olive oil also features in many of the dishes on Pendolino's menu and, you'll notice, selected items are highlighted with a short description of the oil used. The wine list is handpicked by the sommelier who tends to sway to distinctively Italian varieties and grapes that are grown in Australian soil. Simply put, from ingredients to wine to oil, Pendolino is bellissimo.
Annabel Wise