Parma, Surry Hills

Every time I visit Surry Hills, I am constantly blown away by the standards they set. The food is always interesting and tasty, the decor is artistic and spunky, and there is such a great eclectic mix of restaurants. A new restaurant that opened in the last week of May is Parma, an Italian restaurant joining the Surry Hills clan.

Parma sits on the corner of Campbell and Crown Street, right in the heart of Surry Hills and very close to Zushi and The Winery. It has a great vibe with new furniture, sleek design and blues jazz music playing. It features a modern Italian menu which rotates periodically – our menu is labelled ‘June – September’. I haven’t had that much good Italian food in Sydney other than Cafe Sopra so my fingers were crossed for Parma.

Bread with Olive Oil

To start us off, we are given some complimentary bread with olive oil. Always a great crowd pleaser when perusing through the menu deciding what to eat!

Altomare Pizza (garlic prawns, tomato, mozarella, olives, onions and pesto) – $26

The first dish to come out is the pizza. Hot and fresh, it has a crispy base with succulent prawns. I find that the prawns don’t contain much garlic flavour and are overpowered by the pesto. If you love pesto, this pizza is the one for you but overall, I’m not that pleased with it.

Spaghetti Al Sugo Di Granchio (“Al Dente” with a mud crab and saffron sugo served with heirloom cherry tomatoes and peas) – $28

Next to come out is the spaghetti. I am a massive fan of spaghetti but unfortunately this dish does not live up to my expectations. I find that the consistency of the pasta tastes like Asian egg noodles instead of spaghetti. The sauce is also quite tasteless and not that interesting – it really needs a good strong cream or tomato sauce. Despite this, the highlight of the dish is that there’s a lot of crab meat so it does make up for the price.

Overall, Parma has got the look, feel and location to make it a great restaurant. All they need to do now is to bring the quality of flavours and food from an average grade up to exceptional, and they will have an amazing restaurant.

Parma
285A Crown Street
Surry Hills NSW 2010
Ph: (02) 9332 4974

Parma  on Urbanspoon

14 Comments

Leave a Reply to SarahKate (Mi Casa-Su Casa)Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.