The best restaurants in Adelaide (plus a few nearby)
The dining scene continues to heat up in our nation's south. Here are the restaurants we love in and around Adelaide, as reviewed for our annual Restaurant Guide.
In Adelaide and its surrounding suburbs and towns, good food is never far away. Thanks to the South Australian region’s renowned wineries, vineyards and excellent local produce, Adelaide restaurants combine exceptional food, fine wine and charm. From fine dining establishments on just a short drive from Adelaide to inner-city dining room gems that deliver every time, we’ve scoured the city and nearby towns for the best places to eat, drink and celebrate Adelaide’s thriving dining culture.
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In this carefully curated list, we’ve included restaurants from all over South Australia. in the beautiful McLaren Vale, Maxwell Restaurant has taken out the state’s top honours, and we can’t get enough of moody Muni in Willunga. Adelaide CBD has a heavy showing, with thanks to creative Mediterranean Fino Vino and thoroughly fun modern Thai restaurant Kiin, plus many more.
Here, we’ve rounded up the best restaurants in Adelaide for 2024.
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Maxwell Restaurant | McLaren Vale
The observational beehive inside this dashing winery restaurant provides a glimpse into the Maxwell family’s honey wine past. Mead even sometimes cameos in German chef Fabian Lehmann’s spectacular multi-course menu. Case in point: the bright, ginger-laced sparkling mead paired with hazelnut mousse, rich dark chocolate and hazelnut crumb come dessert. But first, snacks of dizzying creativity and precision. Offcuts from prime wagyu appear in a small steamed bun dressed in a lightly smoked eel emulsion with cured egg yolk and a coronet of Sturia caviar. Eel, popular in Lehmann’s homeland, shows up again kabayaki-style, which kisses pan-seared Kiwami wagyu striploin, finished on the hibachi and topped with miniscule shimeji mushrooms and tiny towers of potato. It all happens with vineyard views, with Maxwell’s own gear comfortably paired alongside a smattering of European drops. Service, meanwhile, is arguably South Australia’s finest. Pitch-perfect attention to detail, minus the pomp.
Welcome to aperitivo heaven, a narrow, brick CBD space that feels like a warm hug. Nearly 20 years have passed since executive chef David Swain and front-of-house luminary Sharon Romeo opened their original Fino at Willunga, but their devotion to what they dub “refined peasant food” remains unwavering. So too their longstanding relationships with local producers. Woodside Cheese Wrights’ buffalo curd and pickled green tomatoes (a recipe from Romeo’s late father, Rocco) make for a delightful mess, best mopped up with chunks of charred sourdough, while the Spanish-style escabeche treatment makes a virtue of St Vincent Gulf tommy ruff. A medley of Choice Mushrooms, smoked skordalia, leeks and roasted hazelnuts, meanwhile, might have you question why you ever bother with meat – though Swain excels at that, too. Inventive non-alc options and a stellar wine list celebrating exciting local producers, international gems and alternate varieties make that hug all the warmer.
A sense of adventure permeates Kiin’s predominantly Northern Thai menu, fuelled largely by regular research trips to the Land of Smiles. Chiang Mai “phat Thai” rice cakes channel the chaos of city street vendors, sizzling on tao charcoal burners visible from perches at the kitchen counter. Karen rice – a nod to the Karen people who call the mountainous Golden Triangle home – draws contented sighs across the warehouse-style room thanks to its earthy-fragrant congregation of bamboo shoots, Thai basil, ginger and chicken fat. Salads, like a “som tum” of red and green grapes, burst with colour and energy, while a red-curry cheeseburger overflows with Provolone, “ketsup” and fun. The wine list sparks joy, spruiking emerging local producers and European gems, and so too do the chilli-laced Mak Mak Martini and Splice-inspired panna cotta. It’s all proof that wild creativity hits the mark if it’s backed by a solid understanding of the source material.
As far as vineyard-framed Adelaide Hills winery restaurants go, this exquisite new long-lunch destination raises the bar. Peramangk elder Mandy Brown’s ode to Country sits atop each table; a profound acknowledgement of the land and waters from which the majority of ingredients are sourced. To start, executive chef Jacob Davey – former head chef at Restaurant Botanic – delivers a cornucopia of snacks informed by the kitchen garden; none more so than a tiny nasturtium leaf “taco” wrapped around a sliver of tomato marinated in elderflower vinegar and topped with oregano leaves and chive flowers. It’s not all delicate. Dapper staff donned in earthy tones proudly present plump Murray cod with salty kuti XO sauce, and rich wallaby accompanied by a smoked mutton-bird croissant with fermented butter made from excess produce. The winery’s drops also appear in and alongside sweets, including rose-petal granita infused with Bird in Hand Sparkling. A newcomer to watch.
There’s newfound freshness to this elegant fine-dining space. The ripple of energy is largely attributed to 14 wooden service cabinets, each one crafted to enable chefs to finish dishes tableside. Like late-harvest tomato tea poured from a pot stuffed with mint and scarlet zinnia from executive chef and owner Scott Huggins’s Piccadilly Valley garden. The refreshing liquid forms part of nine welcome snacks, but the real drama comes later, in a drizzle of roasted walnut oil over a dahlia-like assembly of confit smoked beetroot. Or the flourish of vivid green lettuce velouté over braised Eyre Peninsula greenlip abalone and jamón Ibérico de bellota served in-shell. It’s part theatre, part insight into the technical nous going on in the kitchen. While flashes of “Penfolds red” continue to permeate the décor, wine pairings and winery setting, a refusal to rest on his laurels keeps this icon front and centre, a decade after opening.
A heady troupe of 17 traditional herbs weaves its way through Muni’s three-hour Winter Tonic menu, dancing in broths, tinctures and sauces. Each one works in harmony with produce grown on Fleurieu Peninsula farms surrounding the regional destination restaurant. Free-range Wessex Saddleback pigs from 81 Acres appear in a riveting take on earthy “four spirits” tripe soup, reinterpreted here as a Job’s tears risotto, finished with a spray of rice wine infused with angelica sinensis. Equally nerve-calming is tender quail poached in black sesame and aged ginger broth. Moments of surprise disrupt the halcyon haze, like the unexpected crunch delivered by a single almond hidden in the folds of a tiny calamari beak tart. Sensitive seasonal theming, a thoughtful narrative and meticulous attention to detail is typical of Taiwanese chefs Mug Chen and Chia Wu. Rare sake from their homeland, natural wine and opulent Taiwanese red-water oolong tea complete the adventurous 11-course voyage.
When the team behind popular CBD restaurant Part Time Lover saw prime Hutt Street real estate and a gap in the market, they went for it. And Sofia is the breath of fresh air Adelaide needed, especially for relaxed dining dates full of flexibility. The fun Mediterranean bistro is open daily, till late, and rocks a menu split in two that celebrates European grazing culture. On the left, a meze-stye selection of approximately 20 dishes, starring puffy flatbread begging to be dipped in shells once home to plump scallops in garlic butter, or the tomatoey chilli oil beneath chunky grilled octopus. On the right, a triumphant “two-sheet” lasagne with wagyu ragù alla Bologna and meat-driven mains that let the dual-fuel oven talk. Indeed, the buzz is audible and alive at this newcomer – and a drinks list heavy on Spritzes as well as South Australian and coastal European wines only enhances the convivial spirit.
The first rickshaw off the rank of endearingly humble chef-owner Trinh Richards’s exploratory banquet menu encapsulates the “TLR” story. Crisp “bánh mì” crackers with rich duck liver and black peppercorn mousse are a nod to the restaurant’s beginnings as a regional Vietnamese takeaway stand. Now, the place is so popular it’s difficult to score a perch within the labyrinthine, shed-like space. Richards honours her Vietnamese heritage with Thai and Japanese twists. Her mother’s skewered honey-glazed pork meatballs arrive with an egg yolk in salty chicken bone broth, perfect for dipping. Wine by adventurous local producers is also a big part of the picture, complementing the likes of a vibrant green papaya and mint salad, hearty braised beef short rib that tumbles off the bone, and seductive Vietnamese crème caramel. There’s more to come, too: a new kitchen and dining space to the rear of the property will be dedicated to experimental one-off menus and occasional guest chefs.
