With Sydney Spiegeltent in residence at the Entertainment Quarter for a year, you might be looking for a fast pre-theatre eat in the area. I gave Fratelli Fresh a whirl before Mansion, and they certainly can deliver a meal in fewer than forty-five minutes. If you can leave work early, their happy hour menu—running from 3pm to 6pm weekdays—offers the biggest bang for your buck. The negronis ($12/each) are good and bitter, helpful to strip the day from your palate and move right into nighttime.
There’s also a small range of seven buck antipasti that you can make into a plate ($25/4). The calamari is tender, the arancini tasty enough, and the garlic bread gives your stomach something to chew on before the pre-show drinks. The only thing that made me raise an eyebrow was seeing zucchini flowers stuffed with light lemony ricotta reduced to a single offering on a platter for two people.
Their eight-strong pizza menu comes down to just two options during happy hour: margherita and diavola. It’s hard to feel short-changed though when they’re only twelve bucks apiece. On diavola, thin slices of Salumi Australia’s salame inferno are packed with chilli. Their heat is cut by ribbons of sweet red capsicum, black olives, bright tomato and mozzarella cheese. The base is tasty and adequately blistered with char. At happy hour it feels like great value, but I’m not sure how I’d feel eating it at its full menu price of twenty-nine bucks.
