Australia pizza just doesn?t do it for me. Too many toppings, flavorless, soggy crust, there is nothing memorable about it at all and it is starting to give cheap food a bad name here in Adelaide, at least among the foreigners. I mean, I come from Chicago, home of the stuffed pizza, and maker of several very decent cheap pizza pies. In all fairness, Adelaide has a lot of live up to. Thankfully, Adelaide has produced a pizza worthy of my seasoned palate. Farina is a brand spanking new bar and restaurant in Grenfell Square. I first tried Farina a few weeks back with peeps from my class, sampling various wines and exhausting their impressive looking pizza menu. They have Moscato D?Asti by the glass. They make a killer gourmet pizza. Thus, they have my heart.
So the partner and I decided to stop in one Friday night for a quick dinner. This place has been open barely for a few months, so this isn?t really a review, more of a ?this is what we ate? log. See, some food bloggers DO have ethics. I went for the rabbit pizza with sausage, and it was great.
Nice balance of ingredients?not too many, not too little?and the crust was perfectly crisp in the right areas, even after sitting for a while. I like this pizza. Those words have not left my lips since I left the States and I?m pretty stoked to hear them again. Now if we could only get Adelaide up to date in the Mexican food department, we?d really be rocking. On another trip, we had a pizza with artichoke hearts, goat cheese and thyme, and it was so buttery and salty and sweet all at once and just slightly crisp…ugh, perfection. FYI–it makes a killer brekky served cold.
Adam went for the gnocchi with braised beef cheeks.
Just your basic tomato sauce, pasta and meat, but also really rich and meaty, and they let you order an appetizer or main size. Most pasta places force you to spend a lot of money for more pasta than you could possibly eat, so controlling the portion here felt quite empowering, sort of like a good deodorant commercial. The gnocchi was good too…not the pinnacle of gnocchi, but certainly light and fluffy enough to win my approval. We opted for a side of roasted potatoes.
Gasp, three starches in one meal?! Yup. We?re rebels. Screw veggies. These were great. Crispy on the outside, and fluffy on the inside, and a nice dash of salt on top. Only thing that could have made them better would be to cook them in animal fat. Not really much more to say. Farina treated us well enough to want to return. Affordable prices, delicious food, and Moscato. It has Leena written all over it. ~LTG
