This week we consider the restaurant claims of McLaren Vale versus the Barossa Valley; the Adelaide Wine Show; upcoming openings; food trucks heading to the suburbs; and the death of an Italian cookery great.
The Vale versus The Valley
At the risk of starting a civil war, we ask: which is the better wine region for dining, McLaren Vale or the Barossa?
McLaren Vale has had its nose in front, with the old favourite Salopian Inn, the cliff-top stunner Star of Greece, d’Arry’s Verandah on its hilltop eyrie, Willunga’s Fino (considered one of Australia’s best regional restaurants), relative newcomer The Elbow Room, Andy and Anna Clappis’s Our Place @ Willunga Hill (they cook excellent northern Italian food), and the Victory Hotel at Sellicks, with its reliable food and stunning wine cellar. Then there are the numerous cellar doors and casual cafes and providores.
While the Barossa can’t compete for concentration, it’s starting to stake its claim. Appellation at The Louise has been well-established in the very fine dining realm for years, and the Hentley Farm cellar door restaurant is gaining serious national accolades thanks to chef Lachlan Colwill (formerly of The Manse). Add to this what many people consider South Australia’s best Asian restaurant, fermentAsian in Tanunda, and the Valley-dwellers are mounting a serious challenge. Then there’s excellent cellar-door food at places like Charles Melton and the Jacob’s Creek Retreat, not to mention Maggie Beer’s foodie mecca.
Next year, Fino’s David Swain and Sharon Romeo will give the Barossa’s reputation another boost, opening a Fino offshoot in the Seppeltsfield cellar door – a pan Vale/Valley enterprise.
What do you think? Or can you make a case for another wine region, such as the Adelaide Hills or Clare? Send us an email.
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Taste the best
The winners of the Royal Adelaide Wine Show will be announced tomorrow night, and the public will have the chance to taste the winning wines on Friday night.
InDaily will publish the full list of winners, and if you’d like to check your palate against the judges, the Taste of the Best will be held between 6pm and 8pm on Friday. Go here for bookings.
Bookings are also still open for a seminar by guest inernational judge Christopher Waters, from Canada, who will talk about new Australian and international rieslings and cool-climate shiraz/syrah.
The seminar is at 6.30pm on Thursday. For more information and to book, go to www.thewineshow.com.au.
Fork hits the road
Adelaide’s food truck festival, Fork on the Road, is in negotiations to venture out of the city for the first time.
Semaphore is the likely venue for a seaside event early in the new year, and Fork organiser Joe Noone says he is in very preliminary discussions to take the mobile food vendors even further afield.
It’s early days, but there are hopes for a convoy to McLaren Vale at some stage next year.
The next Fork on the Road will be in Hindmarsh Square on October 13. Check Facebook for details.
Get on the mailing list
If you’re unfamiliar with Adelaide Hills sparkling specialist Deviation Road, it’s a good idea to get onto its website and sign up for the newsletter.
Stay informed, daily
Besides the fact that its sparkling wines, in particular, are elegant and delicious, and its cellar door very appealing, it also hosts the odd special event.
Sydney chef Luke Nguyen is back next week for his second appearance at the Deviation Road cellar door, out the back of Stirling in a bucolic gully at Longwood. Nguyen will be launching his new book, The Food of Vietnam, and Deviation Road wines will be matched with recipes from the book.
It’s sold out – with a huge wait list. But, never mind – if you haven’t visited the Deviation Road cellar door, it’s an excellent addition to a Hills visit. Cheese platters are available, as well as more substantial gourmet platters (if you give them a few days’ notice).
Quick bites
UPDATED: Burger Theory has quietly opened its “bricks and mortar” restaurant, in Union Street off Rundle Street. They’re saying it’s “softly, softly” for a few days, until the full menu becomes available from 9 October. Elusive chaps.
Also imminent are the long-awaited openings of two new bars in Peel Street, off Hindley Street. Barbushka is expected to open soon and Chihuahua will follow, joining fellow bar Clever Little Tailor and recently opened restaurant, the eponymous Peel St.
Late-night dining tips keep coming in. Reader Rachel points out that The Howling Owl on Frome Street in the city serves grazing plates and cheese boards until the wee hours from Thursday to Saturday.
If you’re interested in the sustainability of seafood, the Organic and Sustainable Market at Henley Beach Primary School is holding a special event on Saturday October 12, from 9am to 1pm. Chef and sustainability champion Simon Bryant will provide education sessions and cooking demos in conjunction with Coorong Wild Seafood. For more info and to book your seat at the sustainable seafood lunch, visit the website.
Vale Marcella Hazan
She didn’t have quite the impact in Australia as she did in the US, but Italian cooking writer and broadcaster Marcella Hazan will be familiar to many keen cooks.
Hazan died in the US this week, aged 89, and her passing has led to some insightful reflection on how American perceptions of fine food have changed due to her influence.
Great American food writer Corby Kummer has penned one of the most interesting eulogies.
Here, he explains Hazan’s influence – and in doing so he provides a lesson in how to cook.
“The book that the couple (Marcella and husband Victor) published in 1973, The Classic Italian Cookbook, was invariably compared to Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in its comprehensive, step-by-step approach that brought any dish within reach of a patient, interested home cook. Like Mastering, the Hazan’s book seemed to put the entirety of a glorious cuisine that had only been available to a privileged few into the hands of any cook. The comparisons between the two books were set in stone when Child’s editor at Knopf, Judith Jones, took over Classic from another publisher (as she had done with Child’s) and re-designed and publicized it.
“What the book really did was liberate cooks from the idea that the more you did to an ingredient, and the more butter or cream you buried it in, the better it was. Classic – classy – food could be quick and easy and made with what was lying around the bottom of the refrigerator or kitchen cabinet. Yes, Americans learned for the first time how to make pasta by hand, roll out sheets for ravioli, then cut and stuff them with long-cooked fillings, techniques that had seemed unthinkable before. But they also learned that the best way to roast a chicken is to stuff it with two cut-up lemons and an onion; the best way to serve the greatest American fish, striped bass, is simply to bake it over several layers of sliced potatoes; and that an elegant dessert was nothing more than sliced oranges dusted with sugar and left to chill. They learned they could make a pasta sauce in the time it took to boil the pasta, and that the sauce could be both meatless and tomato-less — all of this now commonplace, all of it then revolutionary.”
