Etica, Adelaide: restaurant review
he signage consists of just one big lightbox. No text, just an image: a bored kid on a scooter riding past a pile of rubbish. On one wall in this sad street scene is one word: Etica. As the comic Peter Cook once remarked, “I never had the Latin for the judging,” but I do believe it means “ethics”.
There’s something intrinsically sexy about Italian words used to name restaurants, isn’t there? I mean, I wouldn’t by choice go to a restaurant named “Ethics”, yet here I am, standing beneath the aforementioned lightbox on a Saturday night waiting for a table. A restaurant named Ethics would surely come with a side serve of piety and a main course of self-righteousness. As the funniest women on YouTube, the Kates from The Katering Show, would say: “These days there are so many options for those who can afford to have principles.”
My option on a free night in Adelaide is to eat wherever. And, since I’d met a young pastry genius who told me his cousin’s Neapolitan pizza was, he felt, the closest thing to the real deal in Adelaide, it was an easy choice.
You could look at Etica, the place this cousin (Federico) and his wife (Melissa, both ex-lawyers) have set up in three ways. One might be as a restaurant that puts animal rights and ethical agriculture squarely on the table, an ideological salve to a troubled conscience. As their website says: “Animals in Australia and around the world are not recognised for their sentience. We have adopted a responsibility to promote and create awareness of the shortcomings of our legal system as our moral duty towards animals.” OK…
Another might be as a quintessentially contemporary, informal Italian eating experience: slightly chaotic yet fuelled by wine, beer and a beautiful mosaic-tiled pizza oven, slap-bang in the middle of the dining room, with piles of Neapolitan flour stacked high and a pizzaiolo who wheels tubs of slow-proved dough through the restaurant whenever he runs out. A place where food is not reinvented, merely respected. I don’t mean that awful, confected Australian restaurant Italian-ness of ciao this, formaggio that and bella whatever; I mean a certain directness and efficiency and focus on the output.
The third option would be a combination: a place to eat outstanding, unpretentious food you know uses animal products sourced from farms that practise animal welfare, and that the veg is organic, home-grown, biodynamic or quite possibly all of the above. If you like pizza, this is a win-win. I like pizza, so much so that I went back the following night with a few more folks, just to make sure. And I’m sure.
On night one, two of us sit at a bar that is virtually kitchen bench-space and drink in the energy, the wine, the friendliness, the smells, the music, the organised hedonism of it all.
The “misto” plate comes along with olives, ricotta, two types of mozzarella, two types of sliced sausage, roasted pumpkin, pickled veg and amazing bread baked in the Stefano Ferrara oven. It’s all brilliant and, basically, an assembly of everything on the antipasto menu.
There is one pasta only: hand-made tagliatelle reheated in the pan with a pumpkin and roasted garlic cream, fresh rocket and a rocket pesto garnish. It looks nice.
And there are six pizze. I won’t bang on too much: the dough has heaps of developed flavour, the crust/rim is light and chewy/charry, the centre quite wet, as is the Neapolitan way. The pizza guy is a craftsman. The margherita “extra” (mozzarella instead of fior di latte) is probably the best I’ve eaten in Australia, or close anyway. Brilliant.
The salad is wild and challenging, whole leaves of different lettuces, chicory, apple, ricotta and walnut. It’s like taking yourself down to the vegie patch with oil, vinegar and a bowl. And dessert is a crunchy sorrel “sorbetto” (closer to a granita) which I have without the lemon verbena Italian meringue it’s usually served with. I’m too full. But so happy.
I think about Etica all next day. I’m thinking about Etica now.
Address: 125 Gillies St, Adelaide, SA
Phone: (08) 8223 6928
Web: eticapizzeria.net.au
Hours: Lunch monthly (last Friday of each); dinner Wed-Sun
Typical prices: Entrees $18; mains/pizze $24; desserts $14
Like this? Try… Tipo 00, Melbourne; Da Mario, Sydney
Summary: Remember the back streets of Naples?
Stars (out of five): 3.5
Source: The Australian, John Lethlean, 29th August 2015
Originally published as: Etica, Adelaide: restaurant review
