If, like us, you always wished you had an Italian grandmother who would pinch your cheeks and make you pasta, we have some very good news for you. Prepare for your childhood dreams to all come true, because the real nonnas of the city's top Italian chefs are hosting a week-long food festival on a Redfern rooftop.
Sandhurst's Festival of Nonna is a pop-up rooftop restaurant that's hosting a series of workshops, dinners and lunches from Sat Nov 19 to Sun Nov 27, and much like beloved, home-style cooking - they're surprisingly affordable. You can join Andrew Cibej (121 BC, Vini, and Berta) and his mother Valerie for one of their five-course lunches or dinners on the garden rooftop. The best part? It'll only cost you fifty bucks and it includes matched wines!
For only $30 Massimo Mele and his mother, Nonna Maria, will teach you how to make veal meatballs wrapped in lemon leaves; home-made ferretti pasta with prawns, tomatoes, garlic and basil; and torta Caprese. Or you can let Luca Ciano and Nonna Geraldine Lubrano guide you through the dark art of gnocchi making and a tiramisu demonstration.
If you're more keen on the volcanic south of Italy, join MatserChef's Sara Oteri and her Nonna Carmela La Pegna for two Sicilian-style lunches where a paltry $30 will buy you the secrets to a proper squid ink pasta, eggplant crostini, blood orange and radicchio salad and cannoli. After your hands on demonstrations, you'll sit down and eat your creations – of course.
We can't think of anything more pleasant than a bunch of Italian chefs and their grandmothers cooking our dinner on a leafy inner Sydney rooftop, and the fact that it won't break the bank to treat yourself to a five-course dinner or a cheeky cooking class only makes this a sweeter proposition. We're in.
Need more pasta in your life? Better book a table at one of Sydney's best Italian restaurants, ASAP.