Parisis at Magill

As a vegetarian, one is constantly called upon to account for this decision, particularly the boundaries of what one does and doesn’t eat. At a work lunch recently I had this conversation again. I told the story about how, when I first became a vegetarian, I borrowed another vegetarian’s pithy statement of what they will and won’t eat: ‘I don’t eat anything with a face’. But then someone gleefully, clearly thinking they’d ‘caught me out’ (I’ve discovered that lots of non-vegetarians love to do this, for example, by checking whether your shoes are leather, pointed out that this statement didn’t include shellfish, which I didn’t eat. So I changed my motto to ‘I don’t eat anything with a butt’. But, I’ve recently decided that what actually defines a vegetarian is someone engaged in continuous suspicious questioning of confused wait staff about whether their cheese is vegetarian. Yes, the perennial cheese issue arose again at Parisis, where I eat a lot given I live and work nearby.

Parisis has a fantastic Pasta Verde - spaghetti with peas, zucchini, broccoli, baby spinach, white wine, garlic and parmesan - it's aromatic and satisfying, beautifully green and garlicky. But the parmesan...I rang to order Pasta Verde takeaway for lunch for me and my friend Sarah (who loves this dish as much as I do), and asked the waitress whether the cheese contained animal rennet. She replied 'no', but, and this is perhaps a new measure of my cheese paranoia, it just didn't seem right. She quickly said that she'd just confirm that with the chef, yelled out to him, and Iheard the reply 'no'. Okay, it's pretty hard to get parmesan without animal rennet (if you're looking, try the sheep's milk pecorino at Say Cheese in the Central Market - they v. helpfully put a green sticker on all non-animal rennet cheeses). Unless I actually demand to go into the kitchen and look at the cheese myself, I fear I may never get a definitive answer to this question. And I'm getting increasingly tired of explaining animal rennet to people who work with food. Not that I did at Parisis, I just took the easy option and ordered it without cheese. And this is my new solution - no cheese. Lactose and I have always had a love/hate relationship anyway.

Do try the Pasta Verde - it's a green-vegetable lover's delight. And the Pizza Zucca (tomato, fetta, roast pumpkin, olives, mushrooms and pistachio nuts) is a refreshingly different vego pizza that tastes fantastic, though they also have the more traditional Vegetarian as well (tomato, bocconcini, artichoke, zucchini, eggplant, capsicum, spanish onion and olives). The status of the cheese is anyone's guess!

Parisis is at 613 Magill Road, Magill, ph: 8331884.