Domo Restaurant brings a taste of the Mediterranean to Sheffield and could even help you live longer

You’ve heard of Blue Zones? They are the five areas of the world with the healthiest and most long-lived population. Sardinia is one them where, in one small collection of villages, researchers found 20 centenarians.

They investigated what kept them so healthy into a ripe old age and found they live on a largely plant-based diet, drink goat’s milk to protect from heart disease and the ruby red Cannonau wine, rich in antioxidants. They also take plenty of exercise. No need for the gym, say the experts, a Sardinian shepherd walks around five miles a day.

So to live longer and healthier, the message is, live like a Sardinian. That’s not why I’m heading to Domo, a Sardinian restaurant in the Kelham Island area of Sheffield, but to meet with a couple of friends and because the food comes well recommended. If it leads to a longer life, well then, it’s win-win.

Domo takes a bit of finding for anyone unfamiliar with regenerated industrial Sheffield. We enter what’s now called Little Kelham, through the grand gatehouse and clocktower of Green Lane Works, built in 1860 for Hoole & Sons who made grates and decorative ironwork. The courtyard opens onto a eco housing development of grey brick and corrugated iron. At the far end, the Eagle Works is a 19th-century mill built of dark red brick, now a trendy commercial space with Domo taking up the ground floor.

We are guided to an outside table in the sunshine. I’d like to say it’s so sunny we could be in Sardinia, but with a mighty cherry picker trundling by and a view of an overfilled skip, that would be a stretch. I’m not complaining when eating out with friends is still a novelty.

The menu is a mix of traditional Italian and Sardinian dishes. We order some pane carasau, Sardinia’s famous music paper bread, so-called because it is as thin as music paper.

It arrives as a heap of fragile sheets, crisp and blistered, given a slick of olive oil and served with a smooth, mild, Pecorino dip. The sheep’s milk Pecorino cheese is everywhere in Sardinian cuisine.

I fancy a sharing plate of frito misto with prawns and fried baby squid or linguine with clams and bottarga maybe even veal Milanese, but I’m with long-term vegetarians so, in deference to them, we share a plate of mixed grilled vegetables with garlic and chilli oil. It is fine. The aubergine needed a few more minutes on the grill to soften but the courgette and pepper have been charred to a silky sweetness and wedges of grilled radicchio bring a welcome touch of bitterness.

We also order wild mushrooms bruschetta from a list of five. It comes slathered in cream and a heady dose of truffle (the menu here is scattered with truffle).

I manage to sneak a couple of beef ragu arancini past the veggies. They really are too good to pass on. Just a hint of ragu, then melting Taleggio, sweet peas and soft, cooked rice. Some of the best since demolishing them from a brown paper bag on a street in Palermo – check out KePalle on the Via Maqueda where they sell 1,001 different arancini.

From the pasta menu, our Sardinian waitress suggests their handmade culurgiones, or “little bundles”, a cross between gnocchi and ravioli. These chubby little parcels, a Sardinian speciality, have been stuffed with potato, cheese, mint and garlic, then given a Pecorino and truffle sauce.

If you panic at the thought of pasta and potatoes – double carbs – think again. This is the best kind of cucina povera, making use of frugal ingredients, using up whatever’s in the kitchen to create something comforting and tasty and our culurgiones do the job perfectly. To rack up the greens, we order a side of spinach with garlic and chilli.

Not so povera are the desserts: tiramisu, chocolate fondant, torta della nonna – a lemon tart topped with pine nuts and served with pistachio ice cream, but there are two unarguable favourites, cannoli and affogato. Cannoli are those delicious tubes of fried pastry filled with sweetened ricotta. This is one large cannolo, sweet but not too sweet, finished with chocolate and pistachio.

The affogato is elegantly served in a cocktail glass with vanilla ice cream “drowned” in a shot of Amaretto, only to be further drowned in a shot of espresso. Ice cold ice cream, plus a hit of strong hot coffee equals total harmony.

With ice cream and cannoli, I’m some way off the Blue Zone lifestyle, although researchers found that as well as diet, Sardinian villagers highly value laughing and socialising with friends, that’s one box I can tick then. Add to that the two or three glasses of red wine a day that the researchers also endorse for good health and long life and I’m surely heading for my century.

Thanks Domo, I’ll drink to that. Cin cin!

Domo Restauranti, Eagle Works, 34-36 Cotton Mill Walk, Little Kelham, Sheffield S3 8DH, tel: 0114 322 1020, www.domorestaurant.co.uk. Open: Monday-Thursday, 12-9pm (closed 3-5pm), Friday, 12-10pm, Saturday, 10am-10pm, Sunday, 10am-7pm. Price: dinner for two, inc. bottle wine and service, £115.