Simon says eat

So i got a message the other day from a friend I worked a while back saying something along the lines of “Simon! We haven’t caught up in ages! I have been reading your food blog and you pick a restaurant and we will catch up” This was a choice that i thought about for a long time. There were so many places that i wanted to go to and i was having a hard time choosing! After a few days i saw something on Facebook about an italian restaurant that had recently opened up in burswood!

After reviewing their menu i saw there was one item that i was dying to try, they had “bistecca alla fiorentina” which is basically a t-bone steak that is rubbed with garlic and rosemary then cooked in a wood fired oven. The booking was made and then on a rainy friday night i headed to burswood. I didn’t actually realise that this restaurant is in the same place as where victoria station used to be.

So i met my friend and the very attentive staff directed us to our table. As we walked through our table one thing that i did pick up on is this restaurant has a definite atmosphere. A lot of italian restaurants get by relying just on the fact that italian restaurants by nature are meant to be really noisy and decorated in a kitschy way. This had really beautiful warm lighting and the decor matched that aswell with lots of cream and white.

As we sat down I noticed something alarming. The menu only had about 7 items spread across entrée, main and desert (I have since found that whenever there is an event on at the burswood theater they run this menu, which I presume is just to get people in and out the door as fast as possible. This was a little frustrating because we weren’t given the option and we weren’t on any sort of time limit). Also my steak wasn’t anywhere to be seen on the menu! The only steak available was a fillet steak, I didn’t go for that because in my mind fillet steak has very little flavour. I have to say that the items that we were offered a selection of were delicious!

So after a little discussion we decided on what we wanted to order and after about a 15 minute wait our entree came out. A little twist on the classic insalata caprese however instead of just having any old boring mozarella this had a huge chunk of burrata in the middle of the plate (burrata is a type of mozarella where the outside layer is just normal mozzarella but the inside will be a mixture of mozzarella cheese and cream) this was fantastic! All the ingredients in this dish tasted quite vibrant but the star was definitely that cheese, it was just so rich and tasty. 9/10 $26

For the main course i chose another meal with mozzarella cheese! This was a rigatoni with eggplant and buffalo mozzarella. At first the size of this pasta dish struck me as i thought it was quite a small serving. Once i tasted it however i understood why the size was so small, it was so rich! I thought it was quite tasty however in the back of my head while eating this pasta i was thinking that i wished i was having that t-bone steak! (gosh thinking about food while i’m eating food!). 7/10 $22

Zoe had a chicken pizza and her thoughts on the whole Modo Mio experience are “Entree was tops, perfect! I havent tasted anything like it. Pizza was yummy, bit of a soft base but perfectly flavoured! Sometimes less is more and the base was probably only soft because of all the fresh yummy goodness! Your pasta was nom! Loved the al dente pasta and the delivious sauce. Atmosphere was great and our waiter gave the best service ever! Great night and not something i would have thought the casino could host!” $21

After finishing both those courses we were very full and needed to walk off the meal with an hour or so spent in the casino afterwards. In summary i really liked the modo mio and i would like to return there to see what the chefs can do when they are unrestrained by time.