LOCATIONFive minutes from the city centre, on the restaurant and retail mecca of Unley Road.
PROFILED BY DE GROOTS MEDIAA sincere love of food and feeding people is evident when talking with Lara Marro – co-owner of Vincenzo’s Cucina Vera. It is no wonder she was recognised for her front-of-house service at this year’s Adelaide Food Awards. With chef (and partner) Vincenzo LaMontagna’s food to serve, it also isn’t hard to see why she is so passionate about the meals she brings to the tables of discerning guests. Together the duo shares a dedication to filling plates with sophistication, quality and prestigious flavours. Come to their door for a high-end dining experience. This door, once a dignified Unley Road house, now presents diners with a contemporary, renovated space and top quality food. Locally-grown and organic produce is brought to the door while smallgoods, pasta, bread, gelati and pastries are house-made behind it.
According to Lara each dish is a conversation between the chef and the diner and it is her job to translate. So allow her white-gloved hands to select a bottle from the glass-walled cellar for you and let the delicious translation begin. From here the menu reads beautifully: truffled
salsicce,
fagiolini in bianco and garlic perfume; slender fillets of organic beef, 120-year-old
balsamico di Moderna and 63-degree egg yolk. Start with wild rice risotto, wild-caught cuttlefish, ink and pepperoncino or pasta parcels, Berkshire
polpette,
tartuffo bianco and apple. Mains produce the likes of grilled loin of texel organic lamb, perigord trumpet pizza rustica and jus. Vincenzo house-ages and hand-carves his beef, taste this in a plate of Indiana (grass fed, air-dried and then wood-fired). His sliced-to-order salumi is house-made according to an age-old recipe and the 600-day grain fed Kobe beef has a 13+ marbling and is air-dried for 180 days. Best of all Vincenzo’s menu changes every seven days so gourmand surprises are around every corner.
Roz Taylor