SA Weekend restaurant review – iTL Italian Kitchen at Sky City Adelaide

Wood-oven pizzas and seafood are the best bets at the stylish Italian trattoria on the ground floor of the casino’s Eos Hotel, writes Simon Wilkinson.

iTL Italian Kitchen by Eos at Sky City Adelaide. Picture: Supplied.

When you run casinos for a living, knowing a sure thing when you see one is surely in the job description.

No surprise then that, when looking at the food options for their glittering new Eos hotel, those in charge of SkyCity’s Adelaide operations chose to go with Italian.

They would have seen that our love for this style of comfort food goes beyond fashion, demographics and even pandemics, that we cling to pizza and pasta like tomato sauce on a strand of spaghetti.

iTL Italian Kitchen is positioned as the everyday alternative to the hotel’s rooftop restaurant Sol and, judging by how tough it can be to get a booking at peak times, has quickly found its market.

Situated alongside the entry and lobby on the ground floor, iTL looks out to the Festival Centre and surrounds, a view that will no doubt be more attractive once construction work is done.

Inside, an extensive bar and open kitchen with a matching twin set of wood ovens forms the hub around which a mix of standard and higher bench seating is spread across a variety of zones.

Grilled squid, nduja and polenta at iTL Italian Kitchen by Eos Sky City Adelaide.

An ochre and straw colour scheme brings to mind a Tuscan landscape of parched fields and a dramatic setting sun, while the floor is covered in fabulous terrazzo and dusky pink flagstones. Clever use of timber panelling splits the room into several more intimate zones, while more timber overhead would soften the noise levels when the house is full.

That’s not a problem on a sunny midweek afternoon when the lunching crowd waxes and wanes, while still filling enough of the room to make it feel alive.

The start of our meal isn’t promising. After being shown to a table, the ordering and delivery of a drink other than water takes far too long and when an imported Menabrae lager finally arrives, the beer glasses aren’t chilled.

The menus we are handed could also be accompanied by some basic explanation, at least a reference to the market fish of the day.

Fortunately, the team in the kitchen are paying closer attention to detail.

A puffed dome of wood-fired bread, its surface pocked with char-marks and scattered with salt and rosemary, is a good start. Add a dish of baked olives and a serve of salami or prosciutto and you are on the way to a DIY pizza. The burrata that comes with marinated eggplant (excellent) and capsicum (insipid) would also fit in here.

Pint-sized squid, their bodies about the length of your middle finger, have been grilled and brushed with an emulsion of the spreadable, spicy sausage known as nduja.

Tender strips of tube and charred tentacles are both magnificent and sit well with a smear from the fluffy bed of polenta underneath.

Seafood stars again in a main serve of barramundi, paired with shaved ribbons of fresh and pickled fennel and “salmoriglio”, a smooth, deep green herb and lemon sauce that is like eating chlorophyll (in a good way).

iTL Italian Kitchen at Sky City Adelaide. Picture: Meaghan Coles

The fish is a thick, chunky fillet, the flesh pearly white and luscious, the skin crisp and heavily salted. It couldn’t be cooked much better.

Egg-yolk yellow strands of fresh tagliatelle are tossed with a ragu of pork sausage, wilted saltbush leaves and pecorino. It makes for a surprisingly mild-natured sauce, bland almost, and would have benefited from using Italian-style snags with plenty of garlic and fennel, I reckon. Chilli oil might have helped as well but none is offered, though we discover later it is available. On a second visit at night for a pre-show pizza, the service is sharper and delivered with more Italian verve and an authentic accent or two.

iTL Italian Kitchen, Eos Hotel, Adelaid. Picture : Meaghan Coles

And the pizzas, made from a dough that has proved for 36 hours, are terrific.

Bases are thin but not floppy or soggy in the centre as some can be, with a crust that has puffed and charred nicely next to the fire, though it is perhaps a little bready.

Toppings favour quality over quantity, particularly in the “diavolo” that combines a spread of San Marzano tomatoes, mozzarella, a particularly ferocious Calabrian spiced salami and local kalamata olives.

Last week came news that iTL’s new head chef is Mario Vargiu, whose previous role was overseeing the kitchens for Etica and Allegra in the city’s south.

Given the benchmark pizzas at the former, and inspiring plant-based creations at the latter, they should be on a winner.