What better way to celebrate a birthday than with a healthy dose of carbs and wine. With a well-sized party of six we were able to order most of the menu to share at One Ford Street, a quiet restaurant tucked off the main street in Balmain. It made for an interesting experience, with much of the food being inspired by Sardinia in Southern Italy. The pastas leant away from the typical cheese and pomodoro base and were more inspired by seafood and fresh vegetables.

Location: 255 Darling Street, Balmain 2041
Price: $463 for 6 people including drinks
Website: https://www.onefordstreet.com.au

Melissa: 7/10 – some unique pasta combinations and flavours but not sure if I would return in a hurry

Note: There were Chef Set menus also available but given we had a larger party, it worked out more economical to just order (nearly) everything on the menu so we could try it all!

For entrees we ordered the kingfish tartare, the fried octopus, burrata, the grilled king prawns and a scallop each.

The kingfish tartare was served with celery, capers, anchovies, honey and a salted, dried roe called bottarga. It was definitely a unique dish, mixing salty and sweet together that I had not experienced before in a fish tartare dish. The celery and capers also added extra texture and it was a nice change from the usually more acidic tartare dishes that I’ve tried before at other places. Great starter dish, so highly recommend ordering this one!

The scallops were soft and very fresh, served with a crumb and some mayonnaise but honestly nothing special. If I could go back I would probably skip ordering this dish. At $10 each for a scallop of that size I thought it was definitely not worth it.

The grilled prawns were fairly standard, served with salsa verde a green herb sauce and some chilli oil. Luckily we had some bread still left on the table, so we paired that with the burrata dish. The broadbean, pea and asparagus went well with the with the light cheese and I thought it was an interesting and very unique dish. If you’re a burrata lover like I am, you will definitely enjoy the dish. The prawns I would probably skip if I was making a return visit.

The final entree was the fried octopus with a yellow capsicum sauce, capers and sweet potato chips. It wasn’t until I saw this photo that I remembered we even ordered this dish, so pretty unmemorable for me.

Now onto the pastas which I’ve ordered down below from best to worst:

Highlight pasta dish for the day – chewy malloreddus pasta (Sardinian gnocchi), deep prawn flavour throughout and the pesto and sun-dried tomatoes balanced the dish out really well. The pasta was al dente, cooked perfectly alongside a sprinkling of prawn.

Another delicious and understated dish – definitely the dark horse of the lunch. Not only was there a generous portion but the little pockets of fregola pasta was unlike anything I’ve tried before. The whole dish had an umami flavour from the pork sausage ragout and was perfectly seasoned. The carrots added a nice touch of sweetness that prevented the dish from being too salty.

This pasta featured a pea sauce with cuttlefish and squid ink tagliolini. There was a hearty serving of cuttlefish but I found the pasta a bit too thick and heavy when combined with the thick pea sauce. Still delicious but lacking the flavour punch that the other two pastas before it had.

This dish was on the specials for the day, a penne pasta with cream sauce served with broadbeans and lamb. The combination of beans and cream sauce was a bit too heavy for me. Oddly enough it was listed on the receipt as a chestnut tagliatelle.

The underwhelming dish of the day, reinforced by the fact that this was the dish the waitress suggest we take off our order when she thought we ordered way too much for six people (we didn’t). I am not a huge fan of black garlic in general and found the dish rather muted. The stracciatella did not add much additional flavour either. Tip: ask for some sea salt flakes to add to the dish. We found that it helped draw out the flavours better in the dish.

Finally, a main dish to round out the giant pasta fiesta we just consumed. This steak was perfectly cooked, delicious and fatty – nothing to fault here. It was on the special menu for the day but would have been a great addition to the main menu.

It was a nice gesture when restaurant insisted on giving us a leaf salad (complimentary) when serving the dish after noticing we had not ordered sides. It was nice and light, doused heavily with balsamic vinegar and olive oil and did help cleanse the palette between bites of medium rare steak.

Overall, the restaurant was a nice trip to Sardinia, with several interesting pastas that you might be hard pressed to find elsewhere in Sydney. What I enjoyed was the unique pasta shapes, all perfectly al dente, and how they utilised a diverse range of vegetables to balance out the heaviness of the pasta dishes. There was capsicum, carrot, peas, asparagus, broadbeans and celery all used to great effect, and I enjoyed stepping away and trying something outside of the many tomato based Italian dishes I’ve had in the past.

Whilst it was an interesting experience for me, a majority of the entrees were fairly standard and a lot of the pastas did not captivate my palette effectively. It was a lovely restaurant to celebrate a special occasion with great service, and maybe I would be back if I lived locally, but it is by no means a place I would readily return.