Restaurant review: Rita’s of North Adelaide

Can an Italian restaurant really get away without serving pizza? As our reviewer finds, that fact isn’t even the most surprising element of this new restaurant.

Rita's Bar and Restaurant has recently opened in North Adelaide.

Rising up behind the elegant curved kitchen counter, the dome of Rita’s pizza oven is difficult to ignore.

Not the elephant in the room, perhaps, but certainly the subject of conjecture. That’s because this most refreshing of Italian-ish restaurants doesn’t do pizzas. Never has.

They were part of the original plan, for sure, but that changed before opening.

So what might go into that oven, once a missing part arrives and it is finally up and running? For one thing, marrow bones that have been cleaved open so all that rich, buttery gloop can be scraped on to a piece of toasted focaccia.

Venison, porcini, muntrie jam at Rita's Bar and Restaurant, North Adelaide. Picture: Jack Fenby

But it isn’t the bones, or even the eureka moment of gnocchi-meets-Chinese-mapo-tofu, that is the biggest surprise about Rita’s.

It is the people. At a time when attracting, training and maintaining quality waiting staff is an issue across the industry, this unassuming suburban trattoria has, in a very short time, built a team that would be the envy of many better-resourced places.

Everyone who comes to the table is terrific – energetic, chatty, comfortable and across all the necessary detail.

They’ve tasted most, if not all, the kitchen has to offer and can even make recommendations from a wine list of unexpected depth and variety.

Tagliarini with blue swimmer crab and charred tomato broth.

The exterior of Rita's Bar and Restaurant on Melbourne St in North Adelaide. Picture: Jack Fenby

None of this happens by chance, of course. Co-owner and front-of-house manager Maeve Marryat has done the hard yards at restaurants including Tony Tomatoes and Fugazzi, and is clearly a good judge of talent.

She has teamed with chef Darcy Dawes (Osteria Oggi and then Stem, Hindley St) who also has a share of the business.

In true Adelaide style, the pair went to the same school, but a year apart, so only really met once brought together for this project by other (silent) partners who already had plans for a former gym on the ground floor of a large apartment complex in Melbourne St.

That was in September last year but, due to construction delays, Rita’s only opened two months ago.

The dining room is decked out in smart checkerboard floor tiles, a strip of burgundy below a dado rail on the walls and a row of wonderful vintage-style drinks posters above it.

At first glance, the pasta, focaccia et cetera being prepared in the open kitchen might look like nonna-approved Italian standards.

But then out comes the shimeji mushrooms and Sichuan chilli oil to adorn a ball of burrata or togarashi to sprinkle on miso-glazed pumpkin.

Dawes sees it as building what he calls a “umami bridge” linking anchovy/tomato with Asian flavours. A modern-day Marco Polo.

Rita's Bar and Restaurant has been open for about two months.

The interior of the dining room at Rita's Bar and Restaurant, North Adelaide

This kind of influence, however, is used selectively. The veal tongue pastrami that is made from scratch would be at home in any continental deli.

It is sliced and grilled to order, laid on a fragile rye cracker and daubed with a mustard/horseradish vinaigrette in a snack of the highest order.

Finely sliced venison is presented carpaccio style, spread across the plate and finished with blobs of porcini puree, shredded radicchio and native muntrie berries that have been poached in a juniper syrup. The combination just needs a splash of vinegar to bring the sweetness into balance.

Those rarely seen marrow bones would put a smile on the dial of Fergus Henderson, the British nose-to-tail pioneer, who paired them with a parsley leaf salad, as is done here.

The Rita’s version, however, comes with an additional dressing of sweet/sour currants and a slice of toasted focaccia that has been made with a brined dough, as they do in Liguria.

Crab pasta is made with a double-whammy of crustacean, the scattering of picked meat backed up by a sauce based on a potent stock made by smashing up whole blue swimmers.

This is tossed with a hand-cut tagliarini that would have more presence with a minute less in the pot.

Extra-light lozenges of potato gnocchi, taking the place of cubed tofu in the classic mapo, are stirred through a slow-cooked ragu of pork and veal that includes charred tomato passata and Chinese fermented bean paste, while blitzed silken tofu adds creaminess.

For dessert, a hazelnut and chocolate semifreddo is smothered in caramel flavoured with Frangelico and coated in a nut prangrattao crumb like an adult Golden Gaytime.