La Cocina De La Abuela, Leichhardt

I have to admit that I feel a slight sense of sadness as I walk through the Italian Forum and the strip of Norton Street, Leichhardt near Parramatta Road. I remember first eating at the Forum over 10 years ago with my family and thought the experience was great (how very European it felt sitting there eating pizza in the beautiful Forum!). Now though, that area is quite frankly, dead. So much so that instead of visiting Leichhardt (which is / was Little Italy) to eat Italian food, I visited on a LivingSocial coupon to eat paella at a Spanish restaurant, La Cocina De La Abuela.

To begin, the service was great, with the caveat though that the restaurant was hardly buzzing so the ratio of staff to restaurant guests was 1:1.5. The staff repeatedly came over to ask if we were enjoying our food, they gave us water with lemon to wash our hands from eating the seafood in the paella, and then repeatedly offered us takeaway containers at the end to take home the leftover food.

Now to the paella – it was pretty good. The flavours were great (possibly real saffron in there?) and there was an abundance of seafood all perfectly cooked. The downside was that it was a little too soggy as though they were a little too heavy handed on the broth when cooking the rice. There were prawns, mussels, squid and fish scattered all over the pan though if you’re not a seafood lover, I think there was also a meat option. Not bad for our $29 Livingsocial voucher which also came with 2 glasses of sangria!

 

We also ordered 2 empanadas as an entree to hold our stomachs given the 45 minute wait for the paella to be cooked to order. The only empanada I’d ever had previously was one from a stall at the markets at The Grounds of Alexandria – so fresh, so crispy with beautiful steaming hot meat on the inside which was great on a cold day. The  empanadas from La Cocina were decent with a spiced beef filling but the outside pastry was not as thick and crispy as I would have liked.

Overall, it was a really pleasant experience for a coupon deal. The main negative was that the atmosphere sitting outside near the entrance to the Italian Forum, was barren. It was devoid of people and the greatest excitement I got from sitting there apart from when the paella came out (hurrah!) was when a bus stopped on Norton Street, and the bus driver who was dressed as Santa called out Merry Christmas to the children on the street!

For dessert, we went down the other end of the Norton Street (towards City West Link) which was far livelier. Bar Italia has the best pistachio icecream in Sydney and was still busy as ever at about 9pm at night.

Details: La Cocina De La Abuela, 20/23 Norton St, Leichhardt NSW 2040