Have a SIFF of this

I don’t think that I’m the only one a little overwhelmed by the Crave Sydney International Food Festival website listing – the number of events is simply incredible. While my purse doesn’t necessarily extend the breadth of activities I would like to do, there are always a couple of must-dos as well as easy-to-dos.

Light features at Bacco Wine Bar, Chifley Square, Sydney

Cocktails of the Month of the month fall into the second category: no bookings needed, minimum outlay and good for any time of the month. With several cocktails on my want-to-do list, I manage to tick off the Italian cocktail special at Bacco Wine Bar – somewhere I always wanted to go for a drink, and now, somewhere I’m keen to return to for a drink.

Giorgio Il Bello cocktail

Bacco’s cocktail of the month is Giorgio Il Bello (George the beautiful – perhaps an ode to owner George Michael?). It delights upon its heavily sugar-rimmed arrival in an oversized glass – hand crafted rhubarb dust, according to the menu. To me and the child within, it tasted like fairy floss, wet and crystallised around the sides of the glass.

I think I may well have been more interested in licking the outside of the glass (though feeling pretty childish and silly) than the Aperol, elderflower, pinot grigio and homemade lemonade within the glass, with too many ice cubes. Nonetheless, at least it meant the drink lasted the amount of time it took me to lick all the sugar from the rim.

Antipasti platter for SIFF Cocktail of the month

The accompanying canapé with the Cocktail of the month offer was in fact an antipasti board at Bacco Wine Bar, which was surprisingly substantial making it a great value offer and ensuring against tipsiness for the drinkers.

The picturesque wooden board held a row of salami, building blocks of asiago cheese; thinly sliced, deliciously soft and ripe pear; roasted walnuts; and fine, crisp carta musica (or possibly thin, crispened pita bread). The crisp was thin and sharp enough to cut the salty, semi-matured cow’s milk asiago cheese from the Veneto region of Italy – a first for me, and definitely not the last. The cheese matched nicely with the walnuts, but especially the contrasting sweetness of the pear.

The paper thin pork salami reveals itself as the fennel seed variety – salame finocchiona – distinct in its particularly subtle aniseed flavour and completely moreish with its cured savouriness. It was an antipasti board to have you falling in love with all things Italian – especially the food culture.

Cocktails of the month: One down, about nine to go.