Best Restaurants in Adelaide: A Guide to the City's Finest Dining Experiences

Adelaide has one of Australia's most underrated restaurant scenes: the combination of extraordinary local wine regions (the Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale, the Clare Valley, Eden Valley, the Adelaide Hills), exceptional produce diversity (the Gulf St Vincent seafood, the Barossa meats, the Adelaide Hills cheeses, the Murray River citrus), and a food culture that values quality without the pretension and high prices of Sydney or Melbourne makes Adelaide one of Australia's finest dining destinations per capita.

World-class fine dining — Orana (285 Rundle Street Adelaide CBD, closed for reinvention as of recent years but the benchmark it set remains) defined the category of indigenous-ingredient fine dining in Australia and placed Adelaide on the global culinary map. Africola (4 East Terrace Adelaide CBD) is Australia's most celebrated African-influenced restaurant, with Duncan Welgemoed's South African-inspired menu and the vibrant East Terrace setting. The Prohibition Liquor Co., Shobosho (CBD), and Press Food and Wine (Waymouth Street) represent the quality of Adelaide's contemporary fine dining offer.

Central Market dining — the Adelaide Central Market's surrounding streets (Gouger Street, Chinatown, Grote Street) form Adelaide's most densely populated dining precinct, with Chinatown, the Yiasou George Mediterranean restaurant, the Leigh Street laneway bars and restaurants, and the market's own food stalls creating a 200-metre radius dining experience as concentrated as any in Australia.

Barossa Valley restaurants — the Barossa Valley (60 minutes north of Adelaide) has produced some of Australia's finest regional restaurant experiences, with Hentley Farm Restaurant, The FermentAsian (Tanunda), and the Barossa's multiple cellar door dining experiences providing the most complete food and wine regional dining circuit in South Australia.

McLaren Vale and Adelaide Hills — the d'Arenberg Cube (McLaren Vale) winery restaurant and the Adelaide Hills' multiple cellar door and farm restaurant experiences (Udder Delights at Hahndorf, the Sidewood Estate restaurant) round out Adelaide's remarkable regional dining accessibility within 45 to 60 minutes of the CBD.

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