Arriving at Candelori's makes you feel like Nicole Kidman at the Oscars. OK, there are fewer cameras and this short strip of Smithfield shops isn't exactly Hollywood but as you walk the length of the enormous restaurant, people are constantly turning to smile, greet you, even extend a little bow. By the time the chair is pulled out for you, you feel like a million bucks.

It's easy to see why Candelori's is a long-standing favourite for business lunches and dates. It makes everyone feel bigger, more expansive, more in the mood to say "yes".

Everything about Candelori's is big. The restaurant seats 220 but giant floral arrangements divide the long room into sections, while wave-like sound-baffles mean it doesn't feel cavernous. The tables are covered in cloth and paper, and huge pictures of beautiful women eating pasta line the walls. I'm pretty sure I won't look like Sophia Loren when I eat spaghetti marinara but just for a second, it seems worth a try.

The menu is mind-boggling: 99 dishes plus up to eight daily specials. Any Italian food item you can think of is here: 21 types of pasta, 14 pizzas, eight sizzling hot-pots, 11 grill options, 15 other mains, even a section of offal. The wine list is similarly extensive – 21 pages, starting with a regional map of Italy's wines and ending with nine types of the digestif amaro.

It can be a little overwhelming – and you'd have to think unnecessary. Surely it would be better to have fewer items and know they're all excellent? Our zucchini flowers stuffed with ricotta and spinach are good but I can't help wondering if they would have been better had the kitchen not been fussing about with 100 or so other dishes, too.

There's a very strict hierarchy among the waiters. One seems allowed to do no more than pour water and make corny jokes; only the authoritative Eddy Krpo is allowed to advise us on the best dishes. He does this with such seriousness and precision, I overcome my deep suspicion of the sizzling hot-pot section, rarely having seen one outside a Chinese restaurant, and order the misto mare. It turns out to be a spicy, garlicky, tomatoey mix of seafood and pancetta, the lashings of oil still bubbling as it arrives. If you've been bemoaning the loss of garlic prawns since the 1970s, this is the dish for you.

The maltagliati (roughly cut sheets of pasta) with rabbit ragu is excellent: the pasta firm, the rabbit tender, the sauce glossy and rich. There are a few bones but we were warned about that. Servings are enormous and by the time my friend's capricciosa pizza arrives, we are beyond full. Stomachs bulging, we soldier on anyway, averting our gaze from Sophia.

Ross and Gina Candelori have been in the restaurant business for 35 years and Candelori's has been in its current location for 12. It is justly famed in the immediate area and far beyond. I've heard of a husband in Bondi – not known for its shortage of Italian restaurants – who wanted to give his wife a surprise so he packed her and the kids in the car and drove them to Candelori's. All I can say is, I hope they had room for the cannoli.