Bona Fides Cafe, CBD

It is strange but I find it difficult to have decent and reasonably priced pasta in the Sydney CBD area, since the options are either food court fare or expensive pasta at places like Casa Di Nico at King Street Wharf. The middle ground is best found in places like Bona Fides, a cafe just a stone’s throw away from QVB and Town Hall Station which serves up authentic and tasty Modern Australian/European influenced food.

They have a few set pasta dishes and some risottos, as well as different seafood options such as salt and pepper calamari with aioli which is quite good too. One of my favourite dishes is their cevapi, which features under their “Balkan” section of the menu and are grilled rolls of minced beef & lamb, traditional family ingredients served with potato salad. They are so flavoursome and the potato salad is very moreish.

But today my best friend and I are not particularly hungry, so we opt for some garlic bread to start and a spaghetti with wagyu bolognaise sauce to share. The service is brisk and polite; they take our orders promptly despite the cafe being packed out and we relax back into their corner sofa booth which is quite comfortable and admire the modern dark brown wooden decor of the cafe. They also have a nice display of cakes and other desserts in front of a wall filled with various bottles of alcohol.

The garlic bread comes out quickly and there are 2 pieces of foccacia bread in a basket and smeared with garlic butter, with little pieces of garlic on top still visible. The bread is soft and the garlic butter nicely creamy without being too oily. Satisfies all my garlic cravings of the day.


Italian style garlic bread, $4.90

The spaghetti bolognaise with wagyu minced beef is delicious and quite generously sized, enough for 2 girls to share. The tomato based sauce is not too sour and they aren’t stingy with the amount of minced beef they mixed into the sauce – by the end of the meal we probably ended up with more sauce than spaghetti noodles left.

Wagyu beef spaghetti bolognaise, $21.90

So if you’re ever stumped for where to go for good Italian food at reasonable prices, don’t forget to check out Bona Fides cafe on Druitt Street. They also have another city location at Cockle Bay Wharf but the Druitt Street one is much more convenient.

Bona Fides Cafe
70 Druitt Street
Sydney NSW 2000
Phone: (02) 9264 1929

BonaFides cafe on Urbanspoon

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