Everything I Ate in Adelaide Over Three Days at Tasting Australia

Before a recent trip to South Korea, someone asked me what I was most excited for and I said, “to eat”. It’s always a highlight to experience cooking from a new chef, or sit and enjoy a meal in a new restaurant I wouldn’t usually get to visit.

For that reason, Tasting Australia is right up my alley. It bills itself as “the festival for people who book restaurants before flights”. When I flew down for the final few days of the 2026 festival, I managed to take a major bite out of the state.

Here’s everything I ate.

Thursday May 14, 2026

11.44am: Large skim mocha from My Kingdom for a Horse at Town Square. I’ve arrived in Adelaide for three days of drinking and dining at Tasting Australia. While waiting for hotel check-in o’clock, I’m working from the festival’s hub at Town Square. For more than 10 years, My Kingdom for a Horse has been a staple of the Adelaide scene. Its coffee is delightful, but I’m definitely in the minority with my hot drink. I cannot believe how many people are drinking wine before midday. Feels very Europe.

1.12pm: Gnocchi pesto at Lucia’s Pizza and Spaghetti Bar. Leaning into European energy, I’ve snagged a table in the back corner of the restaurant. Next to me, diners drink RSL pours of wine while Bella Ciao plays over the speakers. The pasta is vibrantly green and unpretentious. Lucia’s has been using the same family recipes for decades and it’s a formula you don’t mess with. I must leave some pasta behind to make room for dessert.

3.31pm: Saudade Portuguese tart. Every time I visit the Central Market, I make sure I stop by Saudade. It was recommended to us by Victoria Lennard, the former head pastry chef of Restaurant Botanic. It’s perfectly gooey and balanced with a dusting of cinnamon on top. Since my first trip to Portugal in 2018, I’ve become something of a Portuguese tart fiend. And while I’m always chasing the rush of a Pasteis de Belem or Manteigaria, a lot of tarts I’ve had in Australia have a dense, chalky quality. Saudade’s stands in a league of its own. Rich, silky and perfect.

6.11pm: Dirty vodka Martini at La Louisiane. I’ve got a little time before dinner, so I run down to La Louisiane. Before I’ve even sat down, they tell me, “it’s a house tradition to start with a mini gin Martini”. I love the efficiency, but I’ve only got 20 minutes, so I decline the mini ‘tini in favour of a full vodka Martini. It’s deep and briny and comes with three olives.

7.11pm: Austrian feast at the Austrian Club Ovingham as part of Tasting Australia’s Club Series. Any night that starts with a gruner veltliner and ends with a group of Austrian grandmothers plying me with pear schnapps and teaching me a dirty toast is one for the books. Guest stars at tonight’s event are Nicola Palmer of the Watervale Hotel, Quentin Whittle from Herringbone, and Three Blue Ducks’ Darren Robertson. The chefs each put their own spin on Austrian fare to great success. Robertson’s schmaltz with crackling and pickles is everything I love most in a snack: creamy, salty, snappy. And the rosy autumn quinces served alongside Whittle’s take on a sachertorte make me excited for cooler weather. But it’s the ham hock and barley soup cooked by club volunteers Gabriella and Claudia that has everyone talking. The rich and moreish liquid wraps you up in the club’s embrace. It’s made with the sort of quiet expertise that only comes from a lifetime spent understanding Austrian cuisine.

Friday May 15, 2026

8.45am: Hotel buffet breakfast at the Marriott. A secret joy of Tasting Australia is the fact that all the international, interstate and regional chefs are all put up in the same hotel, and I love watching how chefs approach a buffet. They have access to all the same ingredients I do, but they create something so much better than I could. I see Nicola Palmer create a deli plate I’d probably pay $24 for in Sydney.

12.56pm: Bademjan, and carp and garlic dumplings from Africola Wild Harvest and beef ragu reginette from Patch Kitchen at Town Square. The weather’s turned miserable, but that hasn’t stopped people from flocking to Town Square at lunchtime. This time I’m sharing, so I get to try even more dishes. Slow-cooked eggplant with fennel, brambles, spiced tomatoes and tahini cream plus flatbread put some much-needed vegetables into my diet. We also try the dumplings. Adelaide leads the charge in Australia when it comes to cooking with carp with dishes like these dumplings, as well as Karena Armstrong’s carp dumplings at Salopian Inn. The Patch Kitchen reginette is the dish of the day with rich and warming 10-hour slow-cooked beef ragu, cavolo nero and plenty of cheese.

2.10pm: Plain jane and apple crumble waffles from Waffles & Jaffles at Town Square. I’m leaning into the weekend with lunchtime dessert. We share two waffles from Waffles & Jaffles, a Belgian takeaway store from Coonalpyn in regional SA, which is in the city for Town Square. The “plain jane” is made with cinnamon myrtle sugar and a waffled topped with warm stewed apple and house-made speculaas crumb.

7:16pm–1am: Punk Royale x Tasting Australia. I’m a journalist, so putting words to an experience should come naturally to me, but I don’t think I’d be able to fully capture the mayhem and magic of Punk Royale even if I had a week to do it. Punk Royale is a collective of chefs and hospitality staff who have eschewed the typical constraints of fine dining to cook in a clubby, chaotic atmosphere. The experience was born in Stockholm in 2015 and has since expanded to Oslo, Copenhagen and London. The collective made its first visit to Australia for Tasting Australia 2026.

As we eat, music blares, a smoke machine sits on full blast, people dance and waiters dole out heavy pours of booze and whimsy. They paint our faces with fluoro colours, they chuck rubber ducks at us, they spoonfeed us courses.

The experience includes 20 dishes. One of my three favourites is the butter-fried lobster with mushroom crème, pickled Sunrise lime, celeriac hollandaise and crispy shallots, which is spoonfed to me by a waiter across the table. Another highlight is the Oscietra caviar, which is heaped onto hands in huge quantities – a direct contradiction of “caviar bumps” – then served with a shot of ice-cold Never Never vodka, poured from a chilled watering can. After the bump, waiters fling out lemon-scented blue Chux wipes to clean up our hands. I also love the Aussie lamb kebab served in a tiny Bunnings bucket.

Saturday May 16, 2026

7.15am: Market Street almond pain au chocolat at the National Jet Express private terminal for Tasting Australia Airlines. A very early start after the late night at Punk Royale, but the Market Street pastries are the perfect way to kick off the day. I also down two teas and three bottles of water. For health.

10.28am: Tuna snacks from Port Lincoln chef Kerri Lawson on the MFV Tacoma. We start the day with snacks on a restored tuna-poling boat. There’s sashimi, fresh tuna on crisp nori, and house-smoked tuna with avocado mayo.

11.59am: Gazander oysters and buckwheat flour fish waffle at Coffin Bay Yacht Club. Over at the Coffin Bay Yacht Club, South Australia’s Jimmy Toone and Ben Devlin, from seafood stalwart Pipit in New South Wales’s Northern Rivers, cook lunch. The snacks include a signature Pipit dish and locally-sourced oysters.

12.27pm: Lunch by Pipit’s Ben Devlin and Fall From Grace’s Jimmy Toone at the Coffin Bay Yacht Club. Given the location and the chefs tapped to cook, it’s no surprise that the bulk of this menu is seafood. It’s all fresh and delicious with the highlight of the seafood being the paperbark-smoked nannygai with lobster mousse served with garlicky vongole. But Toone’s koji-cured kangaroo tail fried in a macadamia nut crumb served in a caramelised garlic vinaigrette is a scene-stealer.

3.18pm: Snacks from Mindy Woods at Yarnbala. As a Bundjalung woman, Woods illustrates the depth of native ingredients through two dishes: a fire-charred flatbread made with bunya nut flour, topped with buffalo curd, hot honey and native herbs, and a lemon myrtle marshmallow torched to serve.

7.41pm: Half serve of gnochetti from Patch Kitchen at Town Square. I’m so very full, but I want to cram in one last visit to Town Square. It’s packed even on a stormy Saturday night. I crave another bowl of the ragu but it’s sold out. Instead, I grab a half serve of gnocchetti with broccoli, garlic, anchovy and pine nuts. It’s very restorative.

Sunday May 17, 2026

7.46am: Macca’s hash brown and skim mocha at Adelaide Airport. I must come back down to earth.