Formaggi Ocello

If cheese was porn then Formaggi Ocello would be triple-X rated. Scratch that: cheese is porn, and this is the place that foodies in Sydney go to obtain the quality European stuff. One comes not only to find extraordinary imported Italian, French and Spanish cheeses, but also to ogle and press against the glass cabinets with maximum voyeurism in mind.

What, you ask, is a cheese shop review doing in the bars section? Good question. The answer here is that Formaggi Ocello is also licensed, so you can treat it as a bar and a café as well as a shop. And there's the wine list, which traipses around the globe with a heavy accent on the unusual. Class wine names like Pieropan, Pio Cesare, Faiveley and Donna Fugata may not be familiar to all, but they're well worth trying. And from Monday to Friday a glass of wine is served with an aperitivo – a complimentary snack or mini cheese platter to go with your tipple.

The boomerang-shaped space opens from a neat little outdoor terrace with a view over the passing parade of the St Margaret's complex in Surry Hills. Inside, there are rustic, rich wood interiors and a young team of cheese aficionados who bustle through the space with authority. Swing from comfort cheese like Pecorino al Tartufo, with its dense flesh graced with flecks of white truffle, to the slowly liquefying softness of Fromage de Meaux, and back again to a medium-weighted, speckled Baladin and its porter beer curing.

It's an epic journey of eating and drinking here. Formaggi Ocello is more than a cheese shop: it's about as close as you'll get to a proper European offering south of the bridge. Mike Bennie