First Look: Bar Cruz Is the Last Big Piece of the Aptos Puzzle

“It’s just a beast,” says Justin James. “Moving guests through three dining rooms is a lot. A 15-course menu is a lot. And then having a bar, too. I was like, ‘Who is this crazy person coming up with these ideas?’”

To answer that question, James only has to look in the mirror. 

Over the last 12 years, the American-born chef has become one of Australia’s most prominent voices in fine dining, having led the kitchens at Melbourne’s Vue de Monde and Adelaide’s Restaurant Botanic. 

Four months ago, he opened Aptos in a 158-year-old church in the Adelaide Hills. Aptos offers a three-hour degustation across three different dining rooms, and is tipped to receive stars at South Australia’s inaugural Michelin Guide launch next month. While Bar Cruz opens on Thursday in the same building, it also shares the restaurant’s DNA. 

“It’s all the same team and all the same standards. Just because one is more affordable doesn’t mean we do things differently,” says James.

James’s signature style is defined by his use of native ingredients and his avant-garde plating, which often eschews cutlery and plates in favour of skulls, nests and instructions like “lick this stick from left to right”.

The dishes James has created for Bar Cruz pair this pizzazz with a nod to his upbringing and the “American diet” of burgers, pizza, fried chicken and loaded choc-chip cookies. 

To understand the extent to which the dishes have been fancified, you only have to look at the fried chicken. Nugget-sized pieces of chicken are served on skewers made from chicken thigh bones with chicken feet still attached. The feet poke out of an onion bowl filled with onion sabayon. “You grab the chicken by the foot and you pull it out of the onion, and it basically coats the fried chicken in this onion sabayon and crispy bits, so it’s double crispy,” he says.

A fried bread dish, which James likens to the end of a pizza crust, is “one of the best bread dishes I’ve ever had”, he says. The team pipes a fermented tomato paste into fried dough sticks which are then brushed with kangaroo garum and finished with crisp wattleseeds and chives, served with an accompanying sauce made of smoked cream, chilli and Geraldton wax, ready for guests to “rip and dip”. 

The mark of any good bar menu is its burger, and Bar Cruz has a doozy. The Cruz burger, which is capped at just 10 serves per day, turns its back on the smash burger trend with hefty patties that, along with the burger buns, are made in-house each day. 

À la carte dishes range from $10 to $80; the upper end of the scale scores you a taste of James’s signature marron, which is, naturally, served on a marron head.  

There will also be a set menu option of five dishes riffing on highlights from the Aptos tasting menu, including a scallop dish with prawns and a bunya nut waffle cooked on paperbark. The experience clocks in at $250 per person (roughly half the price of the Restaurant Aptos degustation) and can be paired with cocktails or wine. 

The former Ashton Memorial Church, which was the Aptos Cruz Gallery before the venue was entirely refitted by James over an extensive 17-month build, is by no means a small space, but James is keen to keep things intimate. Cruz has six bar seats, 10 low tables and 14 courtyard seats that will be reserved for walk-ins (weather permitting).

Groups can also request to be seated in the cosy teepee outdoors. Or head upstairs to Bar Mary, Aptos’s eight-seater whisky room, which also opens on Thursday. Mary will have its own small whisky-spiked dishes, with James teasing an off-menu Bar Mary burger which will be available down the line. 

“I’m really excited about Cruz. It’s one of the last big pieces, but not the final piece,” says James. “The next thing in the Aptos story in my head is the Michelin [announcement] coming, but then in summertime we’ll also have events. Cruz is going to be a place for locals, but also for travellers and people that live down the hill [in Adelaide]. It’s going to be a destination in its own right.”

Bar Cruz and Bar Mary officially open on Thursday September 10. Bookings for Bar Cruz are available now. 

Bar Cruz

147 Mount Barker Road, Stirling

Hours:

Thurs to Sat dinner
Sat & Sun lunch

restaurantaptos.com
@barcruz
@barmary