Mille Vini

This Italian eatery on Crown St (not far from Messina) was a revelation. A friend and I were wandering around looking for a place for dinner and decided on Mille Vini due to way it looked and the fact that it had a few tables available. It is only small place but I like the dark intimate ambience and most tables have a view of the bar /​kitchen. If you’re sitting along the way, it can be hard to get in and out depending as the tables are quite close together.
The menu is varied and there are some seasonal specials which were pretty good. Besides the usual pasta fares, Mille Vini do some other pretty good mains and one the highlights of the meals is the presentation — they are nicely plated. Service at this place is also very attentive and friendly and it made for a pretty good all round experience given we walked in randomly.

If you love Italian-​style tapas and small plates, you’ll love this intimate wine bar on Crown St. It fills up fast though, so bookings are recommended.
Between three of us we shared five tapas plates: the calamari fritti was amazing (lightly fried calamari rings with caramelised onions). The meatballs are also to die for — moist and melt in the mouth.
We also had the Formaggi Della casa (a cheeseboard with 4 cheeses, ciabatta, crackers, muscatels, nuts & truffled honey).
If you like cured meats the salumi misti is well worth it. It comes with ciabatta & giardiniera.
You can choose a candlelit table inside or in winter a heated outdoor table (but there’s only a couple of outdoor tables so it’s pot luck). I quite like sitting at the counter and watching the action in the kitchen.
Between three of us the bill came to $ 200 — but that included two bottles of wine over the course of two hours.

Headed out to dinner with a friend I hadn’t seen for a while and I wanted to make the most of my night in Sydney to get some gelato from Messina. We headed to crown st and had a peruse of our options along the strip. Italian was not really what we had in mind but the stuzzichini menu offered the chance to try a few different small dishes, like an Italian tapas.
We started off with radicchio and goats cheese salad with walnut and orange. This also came with bread. The flavours were good but at $ 17 probably not that Amazing. We also had the calamari which were delicious. Small tender rings very lightly battered served with balsamic onion and aioli mayonnaise.
Flowing this we had the polpette and melanzane parmigiana which were awesome. The ingredients were very fresh and the rustic flavours reminded mr that reminded me of my nonna’s homemade sauce. The melanzane were particularly good with the eggplant cooked to perfection, light and moist but importantly not too much mozzarella with this dish.
I do think the waiter could have staggered out our dishes a bit better. They brought out calamari and radicchio salad both served on long plates which didn’t fit well on the table and made eating a bit of a challenge. The music was also a bit loud for a tuesday making conversation difficult.
Overall good experience.

Have heard a few scathing reviews from locals but I do like this place — the wine list is a bit hit and miss but the cocktails are expertly made. Pasta and desserts are usually the safest bet, particularly the specials — had a wonderful tagliatelle with prosciutto and truffle last time, it was divine! The tiramisu is also excellent.

Overall a good restaurant. Its a bit small and you often need to queue for a table, but they have a great wine selection and usually plenty of space at the bar. The dishes are nothing too fancy, but the traditional Italian cuisine is tasty. Great for a date because its a bit noisy but not overbearing. You feel like your’e a good spot in Surry Hills.

Definitely the most disappointing restaurant meal I’ve had so far in this most recent visit to Sydney. Stale, mealy bread. Overcooked tasteless pasta dishes. Poor-​quality tomatoes on the bruschetta. Flaky service. Awful music. What the hell is going on here???
I give it one star above the minimum because the space itself is really quite lovely (the reason why we were drawn in here in the first place). But don’t be fooled. This place is a hot mess. (Cut that, make it a lukewarm mess).

Merde, what happened here? When I first came to Surry Hills this was the hippest place to be seen, and the queue for tables was a fixture. The new owners are clueless. The food is worse than bad, the ambience is destroyed, the service is downright scary. What a shame. But the caravan moves on. Forget the Mille, see you at Vini (Holt St) instead.
When new owners change a place to this degree they should be forced to change the name — I know this place is still luring new victims based on (old) glowing reviews scattered all over the web. God knows what they paid for the good-​will.

Extensive selection of fine wines both local and international. They serve hors d’oeuvres as part of your wine purchase. The food is excellent as well. It’s perfectly situated for people watching on street level in the middle of Crown Street.
Watch your bill though, it’s a little pricey.

I really liked that song, they sang… Girl you know it’s true… o o o, I love you. Wait, wait, wait… that’s Milli Vanilli. Milli Vini is the wine bar in Crown Street. Never mind. I’ve walked by this place many times since it’s right on Crown Street but never tried it. I was meeting a friend after work and since she lives right by there we decided it would be a good location to check out since neither of us have been there. It was raining lightly so no one was sitting outdoors, but Milli Vini does have outdoor seating along with an inside counter area and seating both downstairs and up in their loft. We ordered some Italian wine, Arancini, Crespella crêpe rolls and were given some bruchetta style bread to start us off. Then since we sat at the counter and there is an open kitchen it gave us a good view of some of the other dishes that were being prepared. There was a shared pasta plate that I want to try another night. The Arancini was good and cheesy, not too salty and the Crespella crêpe rolls were light and tasty. It’s a great place to meet up with friends and share some food and drinks. It’s large enough so that it doesn’t get too crowded or loud, but still is busy and lively. It started to rain outside when we left and I realized I that I had got a parking ticket. Oh well… blame it on the rain.

Boy! Is it hot in here?
It was a Wednesday. Three close friends, hopeful of a pleasant evening out of fine wine and a hearty meal, headed over to the legendary Mille Vini.
The experience was just short of perfection. First thing to note is the modest menu. Although not extensive, it gives me confidence that the few dishes they do serve are so repetitively ordered that they are always cooked to perfection. Fresh bread with olive oil and balsamic arrived promptly, closely followed by our entrées of Arancini ($ 7) and Crespella ($ 9). There were three Arancini balls, a decent serving for the price. Both entrées were good but nothing to write home about. I had more of an inclination towards the Crespella, while my friend preferred the Arancini. For wine we settled on the cheaper (but more authentic to the experience) Nero d’Avola ($ 9) red from Sicily, very smooth and easy to drink.
After a few questions about the main I wanted to order, the waiter steered me away from it and instead encouraged me to go with my second choice, the Gnocchi with butter, sage, and shaved pecorino ($ 22). I’m glad he did. The gnocchi were small pillows of soft, delectable, potato-​y goodness, a serving not too big but not too small. My friend ordered the Tagliatelle with duck ragu, which had a nice flavour but she unfortunately found a few bones throughout, the only let down of the night.
After we finished our meals, we were able to stay back and finish our wine without feeling any pressure to leave. We were kept entertained by the waiters belting out classic Italian tunes, a true sight for sore eyes. It is always encouraging to see people enjoying themselves in their work environment without being too distracted or inattentive of their customers. Complimentary desert was placed at our table (something that resembled a marbled brownie), an unexpected but delicious surprise. We were further chuffed when the whole restaurant was presented with champagne glasses and asked to join in the celebration of the manager’s last night.
So good food, great atmosphere and impeccable service, let’s hope the reputation can withstand the next time I return.
Salute!

A thousand wines it may not have, but Mille Vini is coming in just shy of that target with an impressive, European-​heavy wine list. The dark little space is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it spot by day, but come night time they spill seats out onto the pavement and open up the giant glass front window for some serious people-​watching along the bustling Crown Street.
The skinny downstairs area is split into kitchen and bar stools on one side, intimate (aka squashed together) table arrangements on the other, while the upstairs section boasts a second bar and further seating ideal for larger groups.
Italian nibbles are on hand to pair with your wine, most of which are pretty easy to share. Pan-​fried calamari are a batter-​free affair served with a simple side salad and fresh lemon, while the salumi misti cured meat plate features San Daniele prosciutto, mortadella and wagyu bresaola for $ 20. Veal polpette arrive in a flavoursome tomato sauce, but the attached hefty price tag doesn’t match up with this simple, small-​portioned dish.
It’s a verdict I often come to with their tasty yet overpriced meals, but I’ll forgive them for the consistent, authentic Italian hospitality — one Friday night saw a round of limoncello cocktails delivered to a friend and I. Grazie, mille.

This Italian /​wine /​tapas bar on Crown street has the allure of popularity. However, it seems to always go from empty to packed on the weekdays in the matter of minutes. A date and I stopped in here for what we intended to be dinner and drinks. Upon sitting down, I decided that it is a place better suited for one glass of wine and shared entrée before we go to where we will really have dinner. The Mille Vini menu does have mains, some pastas and other Italian fare, but with higher prices and limited options, it didn’t have anything I was craving.
We ended up ordering a glass of pinot noir (me), a glass of shiraz (him), and a shared board of bread, dips, olives, and parmesan ($ 20). The wines were nice, although I found it surprising that on a menu for a wine bar, I would find something as generic as «2010 Cabernet Merlot (Australia);» Nothing more, nothing less. Our nibble spread was decent, with an avocado /​mayo dip, a nice olive tapenade and one other that I can only reasonably assume was baby food. In general, I would recommend this little stop for the ambiance, but if you’re looking for knock-​your-​socks-​off food and drink, keep on a-​searchin’.