Place of Stones, named after the Aboriginal meaning of the suburb Taringa, is a local cheap and…read morecheerful Italian restaurant.
The thing about Place of Stones is that it is as Italian as a deep dish Pizza. It resembles the original Italian dish, but the ingredients betray the history and specificity of the original dish. In the case of Place of Stones, the food is good enough to forgive them for their liberal use of Greek flavours, sweet chilli sauce and avocado, and for the surprising lack of a single risotto from the menu.
The banquet, which I had, consists of a selection of entrées, salads, pizzas and pastas. There is no dessert, but they're happy to sell these on top as required.
The entrée calzoni, filled with sweet chilli and sour cream, is decidendly un-Italian, but the chewiness of the dough hits that sweet spot that you want from Italian dough that you stop caring about the ingredients. The mediterranian salad is really just a Greek salad with lettuce, and could have done with a little more imagination (some fresh or dried oregano wouldn't have hurt either).
For the mains there was selection of pizzas and pastas. The promise of the banquet, that nobody would leave hungry, is certainly one they aim to keep. The pastas were cooked excellently, and the pizza dough was perfectly thin and chewy, something lacking from most suburban pizzerias. The duck pizza, which isn't mentioned in their online menu, reaffirms my view that duck has no place on pizza. It tends to be too tough and chewy, but in this case it was executed well enough to not be a problem, or to detract from the pizza itself.
Place of Stones, not true to the traditional Italian ideas of pizza and pasta, but executed well enough that you won't care.
