Bandit Pizza and Wine | SA Weekend restaurant review

Unley Rd’s new pizza and wine bar has the most intelligent, likeable waiting collective that Simon Wilkinson can recall in a casual setting – and the pizza’s delicious too.

Pizzas at Bandit Pizza and Wine, Hyde Park

The conversation at the next table goes something like this. Four girlfriends are catching up and have picked a bottle of wine to get them started. Their selection, the restaurant manager warns, is made with all the skin contact/cloudiness/funk that can make natural wine so divisive. “I don’t think you’ll like it,” she concludes. “Can I recommend something else?”

It’s an exchange that prompts two thoughts. First, that the list they have chosen from is somewhat lacking in useful information. And, second, that this isn’t such a catastrophe when the training and personal skills of the staff are at such a high level.

Bandit Pizza and Wine, in fact, has one of the most intelligent, likeable waiting collectives that I can recall in a casual setting for a very long time. This is all the more remarkable considering, on the night of our visit, the doors had been open for less than two weeks – a rare break from the rule of letting a venue find its feet for at least a month prior to assessment.

Bandit Pizza and Wine is lighter and brighter than its sibling venue in Prospect.

Bandit, however, arrives with the kind of pedigree that suggests it can cope. Part of the fresh-faced but increasingly influential Big Easy Group (NOLA, Stag Hotel, Bowden Brewing), it is the southern sibling of Prospect’s Anchovy Bandit. Not a complete copy, mind you. For a start, the new premises in the midst of Unley Rd’s retail strip are lighter and brighter than Anchovy’s clubby confines.

Big windows, blonde timber, sage green furnishings and potted vegetation meld Scandi and Asian influences in a room that is split like an oversized Bento Box between bar and dining zones. Both areas have the same offering, in their own words, “hard to-find wines, cocky-ts, tasty pizza pies and things cooked on skewers”, in the wood-fired hearth that’s the showpiece of the kitchen.

Bandit’s blonde timber and sage green furnishings make a picture-perfect setting.

Shane Wilson, who is overseeing both Bandits, has worked with head chef Antonio Pruner to compile a short, snack-heavy menu that is more about playing with the fire and random bold flavours than sticking closely to an authentic Italian template.

An $80 “Trust the Chef” selection begins with puffed sourdough to rip up and slather with house-made curd and fresh tomato, as well as translucent slices of an excellent jamon.

Kimchi juices and spring onion oil meld into an abstract artwork of dressing for a Little Douglas oyster. A popsicle of Hutton Vale lamb is grilled and then dolloped with a golden bearnaise made by emulsifying rendered lamb fat rather than butter.

Asparagus has also been on the fire, though this interaction is somewhat lost given the spears are dressed in sauce gribiche and hidden beneath rings of pickled turnip and a snow shower of shredded pecorino. Steamed, then grilled, sugar-loaf cabbage, its outer leaves all crisp and toasty, fares much better with an XO-inspired sauce made from salumi offcuts.

Lamb arrosticini and bearnaise at Bandit Pizza and Wine.

A variety of snacks at Bandit Pizza and Wine, Hyde Park.

The pizza bases are fashioned from a slow-fermented (three days) dough that is topped with a mix of traditional combinations (tomato, pepperoni and fior di latte) and others that are quirkier. Our kipfler potato version, for instance, is strewn with the tangy kohlrabi kimchi that has supplied the juice for the oysters, as well as spring onion and a creamy emulsion made with koji (fermented rice). Good for vegans, quite enjoyable but not a pizza that is going to cause a ruckus over who gets the final slice.

Oysters with kimchi juice at Bandit Pizza and Wine, Hyde Park.

Pizza at Bandit Pizza and Wine, Hyde Park. That’s amore!

Dessert is a panna cotta, imbued with fig leaf that is also used to macerate strawberries and make a moat of vivid green oil. All this is buried beneath a candy-cane-pink strawberry granita that has clumped in places and, for mine, deadens the other flavours.

For a restaurant that has been operating for only 10 days, Bandit runs like a Swiss watch. Perhaps a few dishes could be tweaked here or there and the extensive wine list might be better broken into categories or include some other form of guidance. Then again with staff this good it probably doesn’t matter.

For more reviews visit delicious.com.au/eatout.