SA Weekend restaurant review: Sicily Mare pizzeria at Aldinga Beach
Nowhere feels more in tune with the lazy, crazy, nostalgic vibe of a holiday season by the sea than Sicily Mare pizzeria at Aldinga Beach.
Food & Wine
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Joni Mitchell’s folksy lament about paradise and parking lots drifts over from the speakers. A tousle-haired toddler races across the courtyard, leaving her tousle-haired family to gobble a cherry tomato from a plant that has sprung up alongside the cacti.
The summer of love has come to Aldinga and nowhere feels more in tune with the lazy, crazy, nostalgic vibe of a holiday season by the beach than Sicily Mare pizzeria.
The laid-back, surf-seeking cousin to similar establishments in the city and suburban Everard Park, Sicily Mare is part of a growing group of businesses established by local hospitality figure Cono Gorgone, who cut his teeth waiting tables at Amalfi in the 1980s.
While born in Australia, Cono’s ties to family in Sicily are strong, hence the name (loosely translated as Sicily by the sea) and regional focus to some of the dishes.
While the restaurant’s front opens to the grid-marked bitumen of a car park (sorry Joni), beyond that are the clifftops and turquoise ocean of one of Adelaide’s finest pieces of coastline.
Inside, the colour scheme of sea/sky blue, gold and white stripes might have been taken from a lifesaver’s cap.
Two rooms have been knocked through to create a larger space centred around a cavernous wood-fired oven in which a natty rotating stone base spins slowly past the flames.
A door at the back leads to more tables in a secret courtyard shaded from the setting sun, making it the primo place for a balmy evening.
That’s where we are taken by one of the young and multi-accented service brigade who, while extra-friendly on one hand, can also be a little vague around the details. Pizzas arrive long before anything else. A salad is forgotten. Oh well.
What we do get is an arancini that will have the purists purring. Forget the thrown-together ball of leftovers seen elsewhere. This crunchy-crusted egg is a worthy celebration of quality rice coloured and scented with saffron, a little treat of ragu meat, peas and mozzarella buried deep at the centre. Full marks.
A coiled length of pork and fennel sausage is secured with a wooden skewer before hitting the grill. It is laid over a summery stew of eggplant, capsicum, tomato and olives that misses the sweet-sour vinegar hit of a true caponata.
Slices of rolled porchetta, one of a trio of roasted meats on the menu, don’t do it for me either. The white meat at the centre is on the dry side, the darker, fattier layer better, but overall it seems a bit tired and drained of flavour.
In truth, however, 99.9 per cent of customers are there for the pizza and it doesn’t disappoint. Sicily’s bases are some of the best around, a slowly fermented dough and that whiz-bang oven combining to create a soft, tender disc flecked with just enough char. Even the puffed crusts are too good to leave, whether eaten on their own or used as a sponge to sop up any remaining sauce.
The frutta di mare topping, an obvious choice given the location, is stacked with excellent prawns and strips of squid, as well as mussels and clams that need to be stripped from their shells. Pair it with the minimalist pleasures of the tomato sugo, mozzarella and fresh basil margherita. The only drama is that a chill wind cools plates and pizzas quickly, so be sure to eat while the cheese is still hot and oozy.
Finish with a family-friendly tiramisu that isn’t too alcoholic or caffeinated or a few scoops of the high-quality house gelati.
Outdoor areas such as Sicily’s courtyard are a godsend for restaurants battling heavy-handed restrictions and nervy diners. They need our support. In the words of Joni Mitchell: “You don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone.”
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