In this week’s column: a new laneway bar opens, the fastest-growing alternative varietal wine in the Adelaide Hills, a new centre for boutique wines, the Mexicans are coming to town, more Casino dining, Street in the Park, and other upcoming food and wine events.
Lifting spirits
Another laneway bar has opened in the Hindley Street precinct, bringing new life to Gilbert Place.
Lured by the passing of small-bar licences, Marcus Motteram has returned to Adelaide from Melbourne, where he has owned and operated many bars, including Chuckle Park and New Guernica.
Motteram’s new venture – Hains & Co – is named after his maternal grandfather, who owned the Hains Hunkin furniture store on Hindley Street. The bar’s nautical theme is inspired by his love of gin and rum. Hains & Co currently offers 25 gins and 25 rums, with plans to expand the list.
“Lifting spirits is our mantra,” says Motteram. “Our first pour is Westwinds The Sabre, a Western Australian gin.”
The historic bluestone building which houses Hains & Co is right at the heart of the three-way place that runs between King William Street, Currie Street and Hindley Street. Motteram has opened up the front of the building to create a bar that faces the street, with stools on the footpath.
Inside, Hains & Co is decked out with salvaged maritime items, including the 1250kg anchor from an old naval ship (the Rushcutter in Sydney), brass portholes and a bar made from pieces of the old Largs Bay Jetty.
Motteram says there is talk of a jazz club opening next door, with access to Peel Street. And just across Hindley Street from Gilbert Place, another new venue, Biblioteca Bar and Book Exchange, recently opened on Gresham Street with English library polish. Its next door neighbour, the French-themed La Buvette in the former Seppelt Chambers building, is yet to be completed.
Up on Mount Lofty
At Mount Lofty House on the weekend, there was a table of 10 30-somethings who stood out among the other three or four tables at the Asian Persuasion Gruner Veltliner lunch, part of the Crush Adelaide Hills Food and Wine Festival.
Nine were “one-eyed Sauvignon Blanc drinkers”, said the man who invited them as his guests. He had discovered Gruner Veltliner while travelling in Austria and wanted his friends to share his love of the food-friendly white varietal. The six-course menu (designed by executive chef Girard Ramsay) matched to six of the region’s best Gruner Veltliners (as judged in the 2014 Adelaide Hills Wine Show) was an opportunity to prove his point.
Tempura zucchini flower with seared scallop and XO sauce (Pike and Joyce 2014); gow gee with water chestnuts, minced pork, ginger, black mushroom and ponzu (Hahndorf Hill “GRU” 2014); lobster with asparagus, pink grapefruit, fennel pollen and toasted sesame vinaigrette (The Pawn “The Austrian Attack” 2014); pork belly in master stock, Thai basil, mint, orange and chilli caramel (Smidge “The Gruve” 2014); barramundi som tum salad with snake beans, green papaya and nam prik (Tomich Hill 2014); and finally the lemon curd tart with fresh mango, coconut snow and baby basil (CRFT 2014) – all went down without protest.
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The Adelaide Hills is known for its excellent cool-climate Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir and Shiraz. “But it’s no good being a jack of all trades and a master of none,” says Hahndorf Hill Winery’s Larry Jacobs, who pioneered the planting of Gruner Veltliner in the Adelaide Hills with his partner Marc Dobson and produced South Australia’s first Gruner Veltliner in 2010.
“You’ve got to have a unique selling point in order to sell your brand and in the Adelaide Hills that could easily be Gruner Veltliner; it’s edgy and unique and also very appealing – it has an unusual combination of fruit flavours and very interesting savoury notes with extraordinary spice and white pepper.
“Gruner is very rich in protein, and in the fermentation process the wine ends up with an umami quality which means it matches well with many foods.”
The Adelaide Hills region also has a similar diurnal temperature variation to Austria, making it the perfect climate to produce the varietal. As a result, 14 other growers have followed Hahndorf Hill Winery’s lead and, in five years, the Adelaide Hills has a larger planting of Gruner Veltliner than any alternative wine varietal. Together, the growers are pushing it as the region’s hero wine.
As well as the wine producers featured on the Mount Lofty House menu on the weekend, Gruner Veltliner is also produced by Nova Vita, Catlin, By Jingo, Longview, Nepenthe and K1 Geoff Hardy Wines, with Henschke and Deviation Road planted and yet to come into production.
By the end of the lunch, the nine doubters were converted.
Adelaide Hills Wine Centre
If you can’t get to the cellar doors of the Gruner Veltliner producers mentioned, or they are so boutique that they don’t have a cellar door, a one-stop spot to taste and purchase is the recently opened Adelaide Hills Wine Centre at Hahndorf.
It’s an initiative of Hahndorf Inn’s owners, brothers Andrew and Ben Holmes, who have converted a former stable and smokehouse next door to the historic hotel into a cellar and tasting room to represent many of the smaller boutique wine producers of the Adelaide Hills.
“Many of the winemakers we represent do not have a cellar door of their own and their wines are not available in most bottle shops,” says Andrew.
“We get lots of interested Chinese tourists through the centre and regularly send cases of wine to North Queensland, Sydney and Melbourne.
“We’re also working with the president of the Adelaide Hills Wine Region, Tom Keelan, to do some roadshows to the eastern states to put Adelaide Hills wines on the map.
More Casino dining
International chef Nic Watt opened his Adelaide venture last week, a French-Vietnamese-style bistro and espresso bar called Madame Hanoi at the Adelaide Casino.
Facing North Terrace, the interior includes the original ticket booths, historic domed, ornate ceilings and arched windows, as well as a stunning two-storey-high mural by Emma Hack.
InDaily attended the opening event, which featured some interesting as well as predictable finger food and lots of drinks, but the plan is for the menu to showcase Watt’s passion for Asian cuisine – particularly his own take on the French influence on Vietnamese food in French Indochina during the 19th century – across breakfast, lunch and dinner, so we will return this week for lunch. Look out for the review in Friday’s edition of InDaily.
Sazon comes to town
Sazon has been one of the Adelaide Hills’ worst-kept food secrets for years.
Stay informed, daily
The Mt Barker café is one of the few places in South Australia to enjoy authentic Mexican street food.
It’s been run – to increasing popularity – by cousins José and Oswaldo Estrella for about six years, and now Sazon is coming to town.
The hugely popular Gawler Street café, which complements its daily coffee and light lunches with street-food sessions on Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday lunches, is opening a CBD branch.
The new Sazon will be established in a lane between Grenfell and Pirie streets, on the western side of the Grenfell Centre (aka The Black Stump).
José told The Forager the city Sazon would be open for coffee and lunch on week days, and on Friday nights for Mexican cocktails and street food. The opening is likely in late March or April.
José and Oswaldo, who both hail from Mexico City, turn out impeccable coffee and luscious hot chocolate (including of the spicy Mexican variety). Jose is quite possibly the best barista in South Australia – his coffee is that good.
Sazon’s fresh, Mexican-inspired breakfasts and lunches include huevos rancheros and quesadillas, but the full dinners are the big treat – tacos with fillings such as Yucatan-style braised pork, marinated with citrus and spice, or tortillas rolled and baked with a filling of Mexican-style potato and crumbled feta served with house-made guacamole, salsa, lettuce and crema.
We’ll have more details closer to opening. – David Washington
Book now for…
Street in the Park: Taste the World Restaurant – March 6 to 9
Orana and Street ADL will close for the duration of WOMADelaide while chef Jock Zonfrillo and his team present a fine-dining interpretation of the dishes from the home countries of the performing artists over each day of the festival.
For example, Zonfrillo says, on the Friday the Street in the Park menu will include “Singapore black pepper crab, a South African ‘Gatsby’ (a foot-long sandwich with roasted meat, chips and sauce), and a Japanese miso-cured salmon and noodle salad. On the Saturday we will have claypot cola chicken from Cambodia – the idea is that we will cover 28 countries in four days.
“The dishes are inspired by the WOMADelaide artists playing on the day – their essence, their culture and their traditions.”
He says 120 people will be served at each of the 16 sittings over the four-day festival and they can choose from a menu of seven dishes priced between $20-30. The dishes can be shared.
He recommends booking (depost $35 per seat, redeemable against the food and beverage bill) but he will leave extra tables for walk-ins on the day.
More information can be found here.
Fear and Delight – February 13 to March 15
Making its world premiere at the 2015 Adelaide Fringe will be Strut & Fret’s Fear & Delight, an indulgent interactive feast of theatre and food – “think Willy Wonka meets Heston Blumenthal in a burlesque bar”.
In “The Complete Experience”, audiences will be taken on a decadent gastronomic and theatrical escapade in which performance is matched with edible treats including cocktails and a designer menu by The Dutch Food Slingers, aided by a slew of local food gurus including Happy Motel’s Jordan Jeavons.
Restricted to just 100 guests per night, tickets are $150 per person. Tickets and further information are available here.
House of Chow Chinese New Year – February 24
The Precocious Penguins in Variety Bash Car 222 are hosting a 10-course Chinese New Year dinner at the award-winning House of Chow restaurant to celebrate the Year of the Goat and to raise money for Variety the Children’s Charity.
Tickets are $135 per person all inclusive. More information can be found here.
