Review: ETICA Ethical Pizzeria e Mozzarella Bar

At Etica, mozzarella made from buffalo milk is flown in from Melbourne within 24 hours of manufacture. It is a revelation.

Every Adelaide Review reader has surely tried the recipe from the Kraft site: ‘Mozzarella Breakfast Toasts’. I omitted the two tablespoons of CHEESYBITE (Kraft’s CAPS.) None in the pantry. Taste: zip, nada, nuthink, etc… Set to amaze my Italian pals with VEGEMITECHEESYBITE pan bagna from Kraft’s riveting site. 

At Etica, mozzarella made from buffalo milk is flown in from Melbourne within 24 hours of manufacture. It is a revelation. Duck-woman made lurid predictions about her digestive system if we ate the plate of many mozzarellas including a barely smoked scamorza affumicata and the delicate fior di latte. So far, not a rumble. There are at least a dozen more buffalo mozzarella cheeses from Etica to choose from.

The pizza oven dominates Etica. It was built to order in Naples and runs at an incredible 450°C. Mia told me I couldn’t order a Zbigniew pizza again (I had been once and Mia remembered?). The Pole Zbigniew is the fastest Death Metal drummer in the world. Surely not.

Dessert calzone sounds like flabby pizza desserts everywhere. Like everything I have tried at Etica it was marvellous. Start with a glass of Zuccolo Prosecco ($7). Then a 2010 Lenotti ‘Rosso Passo’ from Veneto for $29. The wine/beer list is short and fine. Corkage is $15. Pizzas cost $20/$28 and feed, or defeat, two people.

Ethical?

Food ethics are easy made greedy. One theory to explain the dramatic death of bees world-wide indicts a Bayer-made poison applied to seeds with a Monsanto-made adhesive. The still poisoned flowers in turn kill bees. Good-bye pollination and a chunk of our diet.

Giants Monsanto and Bayer, with smaller companies, have got to nations, politicians, multi-national farming companies and small farmers. High-yielding short span crops are developed to need specific poisons from cradle to grave. The grave is our farmland.

Meantime, eat at Etica. And think of the toxic waste you could have eaten for dinner.

ETICA 125 Gilles St, Adelaide 7324 4215 eticapizzeria.com.au

Hours Lunch: Fridays from noon Dinner: Wednesdays to Sundays from 6pm