Cucina Espresso, Concord

Cucina Espresso is a small cafe located on the main dining strip Majors Bay Road in Concord. The cafe and restaurant serves up delicious Italian inspired cafe fare in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere.

Mixed Mini Crostini Platter

To start the meal we were greeted with a platter of delicious crostinis with toppings including avocado, mushroom, salmon, tomatoes and ricotta. My favourites were the mushrooms which are infused with truffle.

This impressive pasta dish consisted of prawns, chilli, parsley and roasted pine nuts. I’ve recently developed quite a strong liking for pasta dishes prepared without a tomato or cream base. The alternate use of olive oil is great as it allows the dish to unmask the flavours of all the different ingredients.

The Barbabietole salad is the most popular salad on the menu and for good reason, the mesh of ingredients comes together into a flavoursome yet light salad dish. It consists of baby beetroots, cherries, grapes, onions, prosciutto, haloumi cheese, buffalo mozzarella and a balsamic dressing.

Towards the end of the meal when we had just completed the struggle to finish off the remnants of the mains, this beast arrived on the table. I simply couldn’t say no to such a magnificent dish, the pancakes themselves were the best part, very crisp on the outside yet fluffy on the inside.

I would definitely rate Cucina Espresso highly, the food is quite good and very different in many ways not only to traditional cafe brunch fare but also to full fledged Italian restaurants. It’s definitely an interesting and different take on Italian cuisine in a lunch setting.

The Food Diary dined as guests of Cucina Espresso.
All views and opinions expressed in this post are our own.