Sabatini's Italian Restaurant

Opening at noon every weekday, from 6pm on Saturday, with a well-deserved break for the sabbath, Sabatini’s Italian Restaurant works tirelessly to keep the diocese of Parramatta in good, robust, authentic Italian food and drink. The tablecloths are checked red-and-white, you can sit outside and watch passersby on Phillips Street enviously eye up your vitello gamberi, and the restless chefs are always chalking up new specials to keep the true Sydney gourmands happy. This is an unpretentious Italian restaurant, a classic trattoria through and through, that deserves a booking.

Parramatta locals know and love Sabatini’s Italian Restaurant. It’s been on the block down Phillip Street for long enough for it to be treated as a neighbourhood default when the call for some simple and rustic Italian cuisine is heard, and when Sabatini’s opens up its doors and sets the tables outdoors on good days, it’s with a generous flourish. For prices that’ll make more arrogant Sydney Italian restaurants blush given the attention to detail that Sabatini’s lavishes on every dish – premium ingredients, perfectly tuned recipes, beautiful presentation – you can have yourself a meal just like nonna would make: linguini arrabiata, veggie risotto, smoked salmon penne, with profiteroles or tiramisu for dessert – with a basket of bread and a complimentary glass of wine to boot!

Sabatini’s Italian Restaurant has its standby classics as a foundation – the extensive but considered a la carte menu is ample evidence of this – but there’s always something new rotated onto the specials boards. Take a look at what’s chalked up next time you take your table down Phillip Street, ask the friendly wait staff about what’s simmering away in the kitchen today, or, even better, opt for one of Sabatini’s opulent three-course set menus. These are the pride and joy of this Italian restaurant in Sydney’s Parramatta, with the most luxurious of the three (each menu has a different price point to suit your budget) beginning with your choice of calamari, stuffed mushrooms, chicken risotto, and asparagus. Already of a high calibre, the primi and secondi piatti take the cake (hold your horses, save room for the flourless chocolate cake, homemade tiramisu, or profiteroles as dessert). The pollo involtini, vitello gamberi, fresh Atlantic salmon, or Italian-style ribeye steaks are uniformly delicious.