Casa Fofó

"The 20/12 being our 54th wedding anniversary we chose to dine in our very favourite restaurant of all time rather than travel as we normally do on this occasion travel into town by LRT to have lunch in one or other of the 3star Michelin restaurants there. You can judge how full of variety Casa Fofó’s menus are that this was our 25th visit in 2023 and the 45th since the start of 2022! Because we visit so often the chefs know my wife’s preferences in minute detail, but then Adolpho Di Ceccio brought knowledge of them with him when he moved from Pidgin to open his own place! We chose one vegetarian and on fish based pre-starter, each were very tasty, and we were extremely impressed by the delicacy of the paper thin pastry cases they were each served in. The sweet potato starter was also very enjoyable, then the pasta course was tasty but the mussel sauce was slightly too “fishy” for wife’s taste though I thought it was excellent. Knowing my wife’s aversion to fishy tastes the fish course was described to her as as being “fishy” but in fact to my own mind the pollock hadn’t been salt aged aged long enough to develop even a slightly strong flavour and the sauce that was served with it was quite bland and would probably have been mild enough for her tastes, whereas I might be unusual in tending to prefer a more distinct flavour of the fish itself. However, had she taken the fish then she would have missed out on the “pickled?” fennel which she though was very nice. I tried a small piece and thought both the taste and particularly the texture was very good. The meat course was slightly disappointing in that neither of us thought that the “fish” sauce that accompanied the steak was an ideal accompaniment, and my steak had been cooked longer than I prefer and was just a wee bit tough. The ice-cream pre-dessert was tasty, but the dessert itself was too bland. The post-dessert snacks were very nice as usual. "

"I have heaped enough praise on Adolfo Di Cecco’s cooking in the past, but last night’s meal from start to finish was “outstanding”. If you were to add another grade above Excellent then I would definitely rate last night a 6 or probably a 7! One of the really nice things about the food is not just its depth of flavour which is truly wonderful, but the texture of the food, particularly some of the vegetable, is often quite memorable! The strange thing about the place is the age of the clientele, who all appear to be in the 25-35 year old bracket, and very few near half my age. I believe the majority of people in their 70’s are just too stuck in the rut to try the sort of really adventurous cooking that is served up at Casa Fofó on a “routine” basis. "