LUCIO'S
Elizabeth St, Paddington
Sydney NSW

For more years than I probably want to remember I have been signing off my daily radio programme with the expression: “Thank your mother for the rabbits”.

It was probably sparked during the Depression years in the 1930s but it has become a sort of good luck charm for me and now picked up by people like football’s colourful caller Rex Hunt.

But maybe it has been a Freudian slip all along. When I was an impoverished callow youth as a young Police Rounds reporter on the Sydney Sun newspaper I shared a house in Sydney’s Fairlight with three other young, broke journos from the Sydney Sun and the Daily Telegraph.

Most nights we cooked stew. Mince, or chopped beef, with heaps of carrots, potatoes, and a hefty splash of Worcestershire sauce for “seasoning”. Sometimes we even got posh and threw in a bay leaf. If we poured in a glass of beer we called it “Belgian Stew” and it was always served with lashings of filling mashed potatoes.

But on Sundays I would roast (bake) a rabbit. Thank Your Mother….

Rabbits were “cheap as chips” in butcher shops in those days as they say now.

I remember the first time I cooked it. Everything was under control except I suddenly realised I didn’t have anything to truss it with. I had filled the carcass cavity with breadcrumbs and chopped onions and “erbs” as the Americans would say.

In the end I took a large safety pin and a shoelace out of my wardrobe to do the job. Unhygienic but it worked.

I love rabbit. It is one of the cheapest, cleanest and most under-rated meats in the world.

Rabbit stew, rabbit ragout, rabbit risotto are wonderful dishes.

Recently I went back to Lucio’s – one of Sydney’s best restaurants. And the food they put on the table equals the quality of the artwork on the walls. The smell of kitchen garlic as you walk in the door gets you salivating even before you sit down.

And I ordered rabbit. In toffee-nosed fashion, the menu called it “breaded” but the waiter accurately called it “crumbed”. Fantastic coins of crumbed bunny. I loved it.

It is a bit like roast duck or corned beef. You never cook it at home and that is why you order it in restaurants.

Especially at places like Lucio’s. It is as solid and reliable as Beppi’s or Darcy’s. The ambiance and the service are faultless. It is why it has become a favourite haunt of such nosebag experts as Andrew Peacock and Jacki Weaver and Financial Review satirist Peter Ruehl.

I first reviewed Lucio’s in 2001. In part the review said:

The stunning art on the wall is Australian but the look and feel is totally Italia. You don’t order entrees – it’s “primi piatti”.

And good primi piatti too.

Fine green noodles with blue swimmer crab. Grilled sea scallop meat with pan fried potatoes and tomato coulis or a warm salad of yabbies and asparagus.

They also serve a crisp fresh salad and provide a bottle of high quality balsamic vinegar for you to make your own dressing.

As in all top quality Sydney restaurants their fish is varied and reliable. They also serve roast duck with oyster mushrooms and marinated quail – they call them quails but I’m sure the plural is quail – with grilled polenta, peas and roasted capsicums.

And the now virtually traditional side order at top Italian and Greek restaurants around Australia: crispy roasted new potatoes with Rosemary.

Why do they taste so good?

Pricewise Lucio’s would be in the top ten bracket in Sydney with main courses edging close to forty dollars each and that doesn’t include the side orders. But the wine list is not outrageous –unlike many Sydney eateries.

And …. Thank the chef for the rabbits.

October 2004