First Look: Much-Missed Andre’s Cucina – One of Adelaide’s Great Restaurants – Bursts Back to Life

Andre’s Cucina & Polenta Bar was the restaurant that made me fall in love with restaurants. As a 16-year-old, to watch Andre Ursini on the debut season of Masterchef in 2009, then be able to dine at the chef’s own restaurant just a year later, was wild.

Many things made it an anomaly for Adelaide at the time: its focus on polenta, the menu fisso (almost entirely up to the chefs) and how well priced it was for how well fed you were.

Those like me who ritualistically enjoyed Ursini’s family-style Italian cooking were devastated when the polenta bar closed suddenly in 2019, after nearly a decade on Frome Street.

But now, over six years later, it’s back in business – for a limited time only. It’s popping up at Fringe hub Gluttony for festival season. “I’d been declining doing it for a couple of years,” says Ursini, who also runs Orso, Lost Phoenix Farm and Villetta Porcini. “I thought I’d moved on in my cuisine... evolved from those [polenta bar] dishes. But the simplicity and deliciousness of them is timeless.”

For the pop-up’s $75-a-head set menu (“old-school prices”), Ursini is reviving some of the most popular items that “people still come up to me on the street to talk about”.

All these years later, they can’t stop thinking about the extra-textural walnut and taralli crumb crowning the beef carpaccio, studded among truffled pecorino and aged balsamic. Crisp-edged polenta chips are a classic. But the star: luscious soft polenta, topped either with braised beef ragu and parmesan, or truffled mushroom and taleggio.

One special that Ursini will be road-testing in Gluttony is “smashed lasagne”, the slabs squished flat in a pan with sugo and an abundance of parmesan and mozzarella. 

What the pop-up lacks in the time-worn timber and trinkets of the original polenta bar, it makes up for with al fresco charm beneath a purpose-built pergola with a view of Rymill Park Lake’s Champagne Island precinct.

Expect quality food served quickly, with three sittings per night – 5.30pm, 7.15pm and 8.45pm – so you can get in and out before (or after) your Fringe show. Rounding out the offering is an all-Italian wine list and boozier options courtesy of Lost Phoenix Spirits.

The Andre’s Cucina & Polenta Bar pop-up runs from Thursday February 19 to Sunday March 22. Book online.

Andre’s Cucina & Polenta Bar Pop-Up

Gluttony, East Terrace, Adelaide

Hours:

Tue to Sun 5.30pm–late

@andrescucina