Pleased to meat you: Adelaide’s best steakhouses

When you’re looking for a high-quality cut of meat, cooked to perfection, the steaks are high. Adelaide is blessed with several Grade A steakhouses – here are five favourites.

Steak is a dish that comes with a side-serve of questions. Do you want grass or grain-fed? Medium-rare or well-done? Porterhouse, scotch or T-bone? Pepper or mushroom? Long before those decisions, however, comes another dilemma: where in Adelaide or country SA do you head for the kind of beef that will live long in the memory.

The best steak starts with meat sourced from an animal that has been carefully raised and properly treated.

Then it relies upon the skill of the chef to ensure it is cooked to order on the inside but also has developed a deep brown, savoury crust.

It must be properly seasoned and come with the right accompaniments. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

THE TASTING ROOM, MAYURA STATION

Rump cap from Tasting Room, Mayura Station

Like Wimbledon for tennis fans or Milan for the fashionistas, Mayura Station should be a bucket-list item for anyone serious about their meat. The property’s full-blood Wagyu cattle are raised on a carefully controlled diet (famously including chocolates and lollies), resulting in highly marbled beef that is prized by chefs around the country and beyond. At The Tasting Room, diners can experience this unique product at the source, prepared by a chef who specialises in its nuances. The result is a dinner in which three of the four courses showcase different parts of the wagyu, perhaps slivers of raw sirloin, a T-bone to share or a rarely-seen cut such as zabuton. Best experienced seated up close at the chef’s table.

Location: Canunda Frontage Rd, Canunda (via Millicent).

Mayura Station online

GAUCHO’S

Steak from Gaucho's Argentinian Restaurant.

Fancy a little window shopping before dinner? Standing on the Gouger St footpath, the T-bones, Scotch fillets and other pieces of meat and seafood can be seen cooking on Gaucho’s gargantuan charcoal grill. It’s a good way to make an informed choice when confronted by a menu that includes seven different cuts of beef, most partnered simply by chargrilled lemon, smoked salt and olive oil, while a mixed grill for two might be the answer for those who still can’t make a decision. A comprehensive cellar of red wine runs from the Barossa to Barolo, but for something different why not take a punt on an Argentinian malbec.

Location: 91 Gouger St, Adelaide.

Gaucho’s online.

A HEREFORD BEEFSTOUW

Ribeye steak from A Hereford Beefstouw. Photo: Carmen Zammit

Crown Princess Mary isn’t the only thing Denmark and Australia have in common. A relationship that began with local beef being supplied to steakhouses at the other end of the earth has resulted in the unlikely scenario where these two countries are the only ones where you will find A Hereford Beefstouw. The Scandi influence is there to see in pale timber furnishings and a cured salmon starter but the nine different cuts and styles of beef are Aussie through and through. A whopping 1.5kg tomahawk, grain fed for 200 days to make it ridiculously tender, is a real showstopper. Share it with a bottle of red from an extensive cellar or order the specially sourced house wine and watch it cascade into a carafe via a series of elevated glass channels.

Location: 143 Hutt St, Adelaide.

A Hereford Beefstouw online

HEY JUPITER

A steak dinner shouldn’t be reserved purely for special occasions. In Paris, for example, steak frites is a permanent fixture on even the humblest bistro’s menu du jour but Adelaide’s own little bit of France, Hey Jupiter, will save you the cost of a plane ticket. For an authentic experience, choose the hanger steak (or onglet) with bearnaise sauce and order it cooked no more than medium rare (the optional slice of foie gras might be overdoing things un petit peu but then again…) Linger over a bottle of burgundy as you take in all the retro brasserie accoutrement and sprinkling of musical accents but don’t be too shocked when you emerge in Adelaide’s East End and not the sixth arrondissement.

Location: 11 Ebenezer Pl, Adelaide.

Hey Jupiter online

GLENELG BARBECUE INN

Goodness knows how many tens-of-thousands of chevapchichi Bozidar Stojanovic and his descendants have served to Adelaide meatlovers over the years. Four generations of the family have been operating barbecue restaurants here since 1958, starting in Hindley St before a move to their current Glenelg home in the mid-70s. And for much of that time they have been adding a pair of chevas to plates already loaded up with porterhouse, rump or rib-eye, all cooked over the huge charcoal grill that sends tempting wafts of smoke way down the road. This is exceptional meat at more than reasonable prices, with the T-bone (or double-cut Texan) particularly recommended.

Location: 160 Jetty Rd, Glenelg.

Glenelg Barbecue Inn online