L'Incontro Italian Restaurant
Editorial
Enter L'incontro and you feel like an Italian family has invited you into their home. The grand old sandstone mansion, a living shrine to food, wine and art, heaves with antiques and artworks, bedecked with gold mirrors, stained glass and open fireplaces. There are rooms for sipping coffee and sojourning here and there, and the romantic garden around the back, festooned with fairy lights and furnished with cane armchairs, is perfect for evening romance. Lino Mascolo and his family opened L'incontro to the public in 1986 and after a long hiatus, Mascolo recently returned to the restaurant, delivering the kind of gracious, professional black-tie service to patrons that is rarely seen in restaurants today.
The menu's focus leans overwhelmingly toward seafood, but there are meatier options such as osso bucco and duck breast with blueberries. For an authentic Italian seafood feast start with steamed black mussels in the shell with saffron, chilli, tomato and thyme broth, and black ink linguini tossed with blue swimmer crab, cherry tomatoes and chilli. For mains order the grilled Atlantic salmon topped with prawns and baby spinach. L'incontro's speciality desserts are fine dining classics; flambe crepes suzette and zabaglione wheeled out in a trolley and assembled at your table. A good wine list incorporates many popular Italian and Australian labels.
Fiona Davies, April 2006
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