SAWeekend restaurant review: Paladino’s Cucina
You might as well be in Italy – and bring the whole family. Paladino’s Cucina specialises in Calabrian dishes, writes Simon Wilkinson.
Food & Wine
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Overseas holidays are still looking tricky but that doesn’t mean you can’t dream. Search for “Scilla, Italy” on your favourite browser and those images of moored boats, still seas and higgledy-piggledy houses are guaranteed to add another stop to your imaginary European itinerary.
Even better, you can gaze at a floor-to-ceiling picture of the seaside village while eating Calabrian dishes at Paladino’s Cucina in Mile End.
The restaurant specialises in the food of mainland Italy’s southernmost region, particularly seafood, pasta and offal plates that are rarely found elsewhere in town. A section headed “Cucina Vecchia” (or old/peasant kitchen) includes chicken livers and hearts seared with sherry, and honeycomb tripe in tomato sauce. Some people, I know, will make a booking without reading any further.
Owner Joe Paladino has spent a large chunk of his life in Adelaide’s Italian restaurants, going back to the early 1990s when he was a waiter at Rigoni’s. After a break from the industry, Joe and his family have taken over a large property at the city end of Henley Beach Rd best known previously as the home of Tongue Thai’d.
Dark timber floors, white walls, black ceilings and monochrome prints give the interior a stylish, up-market look. Rooms are named after different Calabrian towns, starting with Scilla of course. Outside, a more relaxed covered courtyard is known as “La Piazza”.
All these spaces are filled by midway through a busy Saturday night and the overall volume and sense of goodwill suggests there are a few celebrations afoot. But there are also quieter tables with plenty of kids and grandparents which will please Joe, who sees Paladino’s as being all about family.
His wife and daughter both help run the dining room and it is his mum, Nonna Cata, who is the inspiration behind much of his cooking, including the polpette (meatballs) and lasagne that carry her name.
Our dinner begins with balls of a different kind, a crumbed “malfatti” dumpling of spinach and ricotta that is remarkable for its lightness. It rests on a splatter of the rich tomato sugo that is the soulful background chorus to many of these dishes.
A tangled heap of fried whitebait loaded into an iceberg leaf look like they’ve been lifted, squirming, in a net. With a little spice in the coating, a squeeze of lemon and dip of aioli, they make good eating.
The fish special is unexpected. Rather than anything fresh from the sea, the chef has prepared baccala, the dried slab of cod fish that takes four days of soaking to minimise the salt content and produce a fillet that is soft and sensual in its own way.
Partnered by chunks of potato and black olives in a deep pool of sugo, it is the kind of honest, rustic meal you might rave about eating while on holiday.
On the other hand, a cheesy baked dish of gnocchi and meatballs feels like something you might encounter in a tourist trap.
The potato dumplings are inoffensive but the little marble-sized meatballs (as opposed to the larger, juicier ones served as an entree) are quite bland and mealy-textured, to the point where the teenager who ordered this leaves them to one side.
A marinara special has linguine tossed with prawns, squid and mussels, all poached to the minute in a wine-based broth, that is pooled at the bottom. I like this style of marinara, in which the pasta and seafood are allowed to shine, though reducing/emulsifying the sauce a little more would help it cling.
Paladino’s is a handy addition to dining options for the inner-west. It works for a family celebration, a quick feed before a show at Thebby or an offal fix. And for those missing out on an overseas holiday, it’s the next best thing.
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