The Forager: North Tce style, touring, champagne
In this week’s column, an opening date for a stylish new North Terrace bistro, new ways to hit the food and wine trail, a champagne lounge off the Mall and much more.
New style for North Tce
At the Adelaide Casino, New Zealand chef Nic Watt is getting closer to opening his smart French Vietnamese restaurant, Madame Hanoi.
The fit-out is shaping up in spectacular fashion ahead of the 23 January opening – just in time for the Australia Day long weekend – with a two-level mural being painted now in the light-filled North Terrace space.
Watt, who runs several restaurants in SkyCity’s Auckland complex, is in town today to recruit chefs and floor staff.
His vision for the place is as an espresso bar and bistro, serving coffee and French pastries in the morning and moving to a vibrant bistro menu through the day and into the evening.
The two-level room aims to make the most of the old Railway Station’s beautiful architectural features while adding new colour and style (artist’s impression pictured above).
He’s keen on craft beers and small wineries. To that end, he’s making a trip up to Basket Range in the Adelaide Hills tomorrow (Thursday) to visit BK Wines and Ochota Barrels (the latter, readers will recall, was the subject of a visit and buying splurge by Mick Jagger on his recent visit to SA).
Judging by the rip-roaring opening of Sean’s Kitchen, also in the Casino, Watt will need to find some match-hardened kitchen staff while he’s here.
We dropped into Sean’s on a weekday afternoon recently and the restaurant was packed. It’s obviously hit the mark with location, quality and pricing.
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Nic isn’t the only one looking for skilled chefs.
Across the Torrens in North Adelaide, the Daniel O’Connell’s Phil Whitmarsh took to Twitter yesterday in his search for sous chefs.
“So turns out decent sous are rarer than rocking horse shit. On the look out for casuals, 3-4 days per week. Good attitude. No princesses.”
If only every job ad was so pithy.
Food trails on your phone
How the food-wine-tourism landscape has changed since 2006 when former McLaren Vale fromager Mark Potter launched his user-friendly self-drive cheese and wine trails.
The former owner of Blessed Cheese, who now works as a digital media strategist, has created a new way to navigate the barrage of multimedia information available to food and wine tourists.
His new brainchild, Daytrippa, bypasses the need for an app download, instead employing mobile responsive web technology to present an array of entertaining self-drive day-trips with GPS-based route maps on visitor’s mobile devices.
Daytrippa currently covers seven regions of South Australia including metropolitan Adelaide, six major regional towns with high tourism traffic, and five tourist trails with unique food, wine or tourism experiences.
“Our state’s tourism websites do a great job showcasing the regions in broad terms, but can be a little overwhelming for the visitor,” says Potter. “We work with our regional partners to create simple, self-drive day-trip experiences which make it easy for the consumer to enjoy a great day in the region without the need for in-depth research.
“By presenting our regions as a number of unique day trip experiences, we can encourage visitors to stay overnight, or return another day, to enjoying multiple day(trips)s in the region.”
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Daytrippa’s offering for the McLaren Vale region, for example, provides six day-trip options including an “Organic Wine Trail”, an itinerary of six Willunga sub-region wineries, a tour showcasing some of the region’s single vineyard Shiraz wines, a walking trail, a family winery trail offering children’s activities, and an itinerary of six historic family wineries.
“We are now starting to link our day-trips together into journeys,” Potter says. “A visitor can choose a day-trip in McLaren Vale, another in the Adelaide Hills, and another in the Barossa, and so create a great food and wine adventure across the state.”
The most recent addition to the Daytrippa site is the metro Adelaide region, featuring experiences such as the Flavours of Campbelltown Food Trail and the Port River Dolphin Trail, which were previously only accessible by downloading a pdf from the local council websites.
For more info, go here.
– Mary Taylor
Mall update
An update on our report last week about the progress of Lindes Lane, a small bar planned for the eponymous lane off Rundle Mall: the owners now hope to be up and running in time for the 2015 Fringe Festival.
The site is operating as a fun pop-up bar on Fridays and Saturdays, but a permanent bar is set to be fitted out by owners Ian Callahan (Bar 9) and Jason Jurecky.
Jurecky, a designer who is overseeing the fit-out, says the two-level bar will have a champagne lounge downstairs (think French industrial chic) and a focus on craft beer and wine upstairs. The bar will also retain its alfresco area, which is now open for drinks every Friday and Saturday from midday to midnight until Christmas.
Says Jurecky on the fit-out: “Inside will be a quirky mix of things that I have always wanted to do – but people haven’t been brave enough to do it!”
Deviation Road wins
We’ve been banging on about their bubbles for a while now, but Adelaide Hill’s sparkling specialists, Deviation Road, are really worth a try.
The winery, which has a lovely cellar door on Longwood Road, has just picked up a gong at the Sydney International Wine Competition for best Australian sparkling wine – aperitif style.
The trophy went to Deviation Road’s Loftia Vintage Brut 2012. Give it a go.
Writing about food
The University of Adelaide offers Australia’s only accredited food writing course, coordinated by arguably the nation’s best food writer, Barbara Santich.
It’s not just for people who want to be restaurant critics, Santich welcomes students with a whole gamut of ambitions, from producing a family cookbook to authoring a restaurant guide for people with allergies.
Applications for next year’s courses are now open. Details here.
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