After starting the year on a rocky note with an onslaught of closures, things have picked up for the Adelaide hospitality scene. By July we’d seen a solid list of casual cafes and more refined restaurants set up shop. Arguably the year’s most anticipated venue, Tom Tilbury’s Botanic Lodge, opened to the public this week.
But it’s not all downhill from here – these five venues are set to open before we officially slide into 2025.
When Broadsheet shared Vinteloper’s plans for an ambitious tasting room on an idyllic Cudlee Creek property back in 2018, winemaker David Bowley described the project as “a long game”. He didn’t know how accurate that would turn out to be. In late 2019, the 30-hectare property was destroyed by a bushfire. Five years on, Bowley and his wife Sharon Hong have rebuilt from the ground up.
The new dwelling will be the official home for the 16-year-old wine label. There will be wine flights served looking out over vineyards and tasting plates from chef Shannon Fleming. The build integrates the remains of the farmstead’s original masonry work while incorporating sustainable touches such as a solar support system, electric vehicle charging and sprinklers across the grounds to protect against further fires. There are also more than 2000 native plants being replanted on the site.
House of Vinteloper is set to open this weekend.
Next door to the Cannoli Box Co on Churchill Road, the same team will open a savoury-focused venue serving panini and items based on family recipes. The narrow shopfront has been re-fit with marble countertops, oak cabinetry and cherry-red booths. Much of the menu has been created to honour the food philosophy of owner John-Paul Romeo’s grandparents; items include meatballs based on a recipe by his Nonna Tina and panini packed with fresh produce.
Ino Paninoteca is set to open on October 5.
The crew behind Mother Vine and East End Cellars (Vardon Avenue and Norwood) are putting down roots in the west end with its new restaurant Station Road, opening in November on the ground floor of Festival Tower, next to Adelaide Railway Station.
The team, which includes co-owners Michael Andrewartha and Mathieu Smeysters, has appointed New Zealand-born head chef Baine Stubbs, who’s clocked time at Parisian restaurants Ellsworth and Clamato. Stubbs will deliver brasserie-style dishes such as lobster cannelloni with Iberico ham and mornay sauce, quail ballotine with foie gras and pancetta, and Wagyu 9+ eye fillet with sauce au poivre and pommes dauphine (crisp puffs of mashed potato in choux pastry). Eventually there’ll be tableside dessert trolleys, too.
There’ll also be a temperature-controlled wine vault visible from the outside, filled with traditional and more obscure Australian and international varietals poured via a Coravin system, which allows hard-to-find wines to be served by the glass.
Station Road is expected to open in November.
When Clare Falzon cheffed at Hentley Farm Restaurant, she’d drive past the old Marananga Primary School building daily on the way to work and often imagined opening an eatery on the abandoned site. Cut to late 2023: Falzon departed Hentley Farm and connected with Renee de Saxe, Luke Edwards, Kirsty Kingsley and Nick Radford, who together own regional art space Wonderground Gallery, a wine label of the same name, plus Mirus Vineyards. The dynamic foursome are now turning that schoolhouse (empty since the mid-1990s) into a new food and arts precinct.
Staguni (“seasons” in Maltese) will home in on Mediterranean cooking and flavours from Falzon’s Maltese heritage, with strong influence from the island’s neighbours: Sicily, North Africa and the Middle East. Expect lots of local seafood, like a vitello tonnato-inspired white anchovy mayo with lightly seared beef, topped with toasted sunflower seeds and sweet currants. Another dish she’s excited about is zucchini flowers fried in crispy tapioca batter, tossed in sumac and drizzled with honey, then swiped through yoghurt.
The restaurant will sit in the original 1922 brick schoolhouse, featuring a cosy fireplace and the classroom’s original blackboard, which will be used to scrawl the day’s snack specials or wines by the glass.
Staguni is expected to open later this spring.
A long-vacant Frome Street shopfront will be home to a hi-fi listening bar. “We all have that one ultra-trendy friend who dresses better than us, drinks trendier drinks than us and listens to music we’ve never heard of,” Sean Howard, one of the venue’s backers, tells Broadsheet. “Honeydripper will be like you’re going to their house for a dinner party; it's a cool space, the wine is next level, and they're playing a handful of incredible records.”
The two-level, 200-capacity space is shooting for a swooning, laid-back vibe plucked straight from LA’s Laurel Canyon, the epicentre of American music and counterculture in the ’60s and ’70s. In keeping with that era, two giant conversation pits, surrounded by a handful of booths and bar seating, will provide an intimate setting to chill with friends.
Honeydripper will also play host to a high-fidelity audio experience. The star of the show is a boutique, top-of-the-line sound system pieced together by Lenin Paunovic, who also kitted out Sugar and Longplay Bistro among other venues. It will be backed by an in-house vinyl library stacked with more than 3000 records curated by Chicago DJ Gene Farris.
During the day Honeydripper, which is right around the corner from Adelaide Uni, will see Zac Schneider and the team from Carton Deli serve sangas and coffee in custom, retro-inspired crockery by Netherlands artist Emiel Hetsen to the AM crowd. (The booths will even have USB and power points if you want to bring your laptop.)
Honeydripper aims to open before the end of the year.
Additional reporting by Daniela Frangos, Emma Hale and Tim Watts.
Editor's note: This article was published on Thursday September 26 but since then House of Vinteloper has opened.
