Restaurant Orana
The pressure to continue to innovate must be intense for any top-flight restaurant, but at Orana they’re adapting from a playbook thousands of years old.
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285 Rundle St, city
(08) 8232 3444
The pressure to continue to innovate must be intense for any top-flight restaurant, but at Orana they’re adapting from a playbook thousands of years old.
Chef Jock Zonfrillo doesn’t let the grass grow and his roughly 18-course tasting menu is constantly evolving, based on his work with indigenous elders and experiments with native ingredients. So repeat visits to this elegant little food lab are always warranted.
Dinner starts with damper cooked over hot coals at the table. After that, it’s a wild ride: Coorong mullet roti with an Aussie jerk sauce, so good it could launch a thousand food trucks. Or a trio of flavour shots: hot and sour line-caught Port Wakefield squid, Murray River cod with leek and eucalyptus, oysters topped with kangaroo tail and lemon aspen.
The surf and turf is sensational, toro and Mayura wagyu cooked over the fire; kangaroo is next level thanks to an incredible master stock.
As chic as the tiny upstairs eatery is with its mid-century tables and Jock’s ever-expanding collection of wabi-sabi ceramics, it’s entirely devoid of pretension.
The welcome is relaxed with head chef Sam Christopher popping out to introduce dishes and guests encouraged to eat with their fingers (lemon myrtle-scented towels at the ready).
A sublime set buffalo milk with strawberry and eucalyptus followed by chocolates inspired by Jock’s latest obsession, the long since defunct MacRobertson’s, round out an incredible dining experience that’s about so much more than the food.
- Hours: L Fri D Tues-Sat
- Bill: Tasting Menu $265 dinner and $130 lunch
- Wine: Extensive wine list
- Chefs: Jock Zonfrillo, Sam Christopher
