Here are five brunch spots to try in regional South Australia
Exploring our great state is hungry work! To help fill your belly, we’ve put together a guide to the some of the best brunch spots to try outside the city.
Food & Wine
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Brunch is the perfect way to slow down, catch up with friends and make the most of the spring weather. If you’re planning a road trip outside of the city, here are five great regional brunch spots you should try on your travels.
GOLDEN FLEECE
1/30 High St, Willunga, ph 8556 2113
facebook.com/thegoldenfleececafe
LIKE Willunga’s original Golden Fleece Roadhouse of the 1950s, this retro eponymous cafe is all about friendly service. It’s not fancy, just an amusingly colourful blast from the past.
The setting is a throwback to mum’s old formica kitchen table and vinyl chairs with spindly metal legs. Rest assured, those chairs are well padded and built for comfy lingering over all-day brunchy food, coffees and cakes.
The place is a bit of a jumble, with brightly coloured crockery, even brighter crocheted “blankies” for those who might sit outside once the new courtyard under construction is complete. And, swathes of fresh bright blue walls draw your eye to the kitchen out back, where home-style cooking is backing up the simple menu.
Rows of more psychedelics are actually small-batch handcrafted antioxidant teas, from relaxing Oolong and anti-inflammatory “kick-ass traditional chai” to a soothing Ginger Ninja said to aid digestion.
Tradies are filling the sunny spot outside getting a timely makeover. Inside, the floor could do with a better sweep, but the tables are clean and well-spaced. And we spy enough temptation in the dessert fridge, mostly crafted by the mum in this daughter-mother operation, to ensure we leave space for sweets.
The menu is ideal for our diverse girls’s group, focusing on popular eggie dishes, BLTs, burgers, wraps, smashed avo and pancakes, or, there’s a lengthy list of items to build your own brunch.
My choice is an all-day-sustaining feast of housemade cornbread, with perfect crumbly texture, laden with lots of good bacon nicely curling at the edges, avo, tasty tomato salsa, sour cream and rocket, plus a side of mushrooms given a little love in the pan with the addition of thyme.
Other add-ons boosting the main menu include zucchini fritters, chicken sausage, and potato rosti. Gluten free guests are also catered for.
For four years, the cafe at the jutting end of the former food and fuel stop, at the base of the windy old hill road, has been drawing in locals looking for a good strong cappuccino with lots of choc sprinkle.
It’s a bit noisy, a little wild and lots of fun.
COMIDA
100C Mt Barker Rd, Hahndorf. Ph 8388 1725
SUNDAY 10.30am and three giant paella pans are fired up, reminiscent of the former Adelaide Central Market Comida stall. There must be a party coming in for lunch at its elegant newer digs in Hahndorf, sleekly revamped, and renowned for an occasion-worthy rear garden and deck.
For us, this Adelaide Hills brunch outing is an early post-iso foray beyond our so-long-closed doors. Hahndorf and a bit of Spanish tucker seem like a great adventure. It’s a bit early for our window table to enjoy the northern sun. A better spot would be closer to the pans, with entertainment as chefs build and build paella flavours. We are, however, warmed by the service. It’s busy, with the extra burden of thorough cleaning of tables and chairs between seatings, but the crew find time to be truly nice.
Instead of paella, tapas and pintxos, the four of us graze Comida’s entire morning cook-up. We split a Spanish omelette, traditionally more like a potato and onion frittata. It’s smashed-avo-like safe, nicely seasoned and good morning food, as is chunky ciabatta topped with a frilly mound of quality jamon and an egg poached to provide a perfect bright and saucy ooze.
A better spin on Spanish flavours is in the salted mulloway with plops of punchy mojo verde, and sunshine fried egg under a tumble of glossy greens scattered with crisp and pretty pink-rimmed radish. Also, huevos (egg, pronounced way-vo) a la flamenco. The poached googies and manchego cheese melt into a pot of pork-hock-flavoured tomato, plus white beans.
We like these fancy baked beans. Bookings are tight and good coffees arrive quickly. Monopolising the table is now taboo, so next is a walk across the road to Udder Delights to stock up on special blue cheese and buckets of goat curd so handy to have in the fridge at home. We stretch the morning into wine o’clock via a fresh strawberry ice creams jaunt to Beerenberg Farm just up the road, before winding back through Hahndorf to sample some new cellar doors in town. What a lovely, lazy day out.
FRED EATERY
220 Mount Barker Rd, Aldgate, ph 8339 1899
BRUSSELS sprouts and wine – in the morning? Yep, that’s brunch. We’ve enjoyed a lovely drive, meandering through fog into the Adelaide Hills, as prettily blushed and lush as can be, offsetting the bleariness of this wintry Sunday morning.
On a warmer day we might join the brave ones at tables in the breezeway between thecafé and its partner home-and-gift boutique next door.
Inside, Fred is a typical cafe with some smart tiles, some timber, mostly hard surfaces except for the banquette we occupy, and, a noisy crowd happily signalling the eatery’s popularity.
Bums on seats are consistently plentiful for a number of reasons, including the all-day licence, good coffees, very generous portions, and an easy system of pay as you go at the counter.
My sprouts bruschetta is from the specials board, the toasty edged and soft centred love-it or hate-it veg loaded on black ciabatta along with salsa verde, kale, bacon and a restrained drizzle of housemade hollandaise. This meal is dark and rich. To me, all those wilted greens are a little oily and aching for the addition of a fresh sidekick, but it’s a meal to see you through the day.
The smashed avo is a slightly lighter option despite an equal lot going on. Eggs, spinach, ash feta, dukkah on spelt sourdough team with a bright avocado and pistachio salad. And you’re invited to add haloumi, grilled bacon or other extras.
The diverse menu hails free-range eggs from “girls” fed on local farm feed, and also frequently veers from brekkie traditions. Indian eggs are lightly spiced and served with roasted cumin yoghurt and eggplant relish. Malaysian Bang Bang, on the all-day breakfast list, is a set of chicken satays with lime leaf risotto cake, egg, and a mint and coriander salad.
We’re limited to 75 minutes. This works just fine. Efficient kitchen and wait staff somehow keep up the flow without seeming rushed.
There’s even time for good coffees. We also eye a high and silky lemon tart on the counter. Today, dessert takeaway is the go, because these brunches are a mighty filling bunch.
BOMBORA ON THE RIVER
94 Barrage Rd, Goolwa. Ph 8555 1235
MORE than ever, you have to love (and support) the constants in life. For us, they involve food – the fresh, the local, the consistently good.
Back in March, I started writing about a Bombora visit. It’s a long-time reliable fave cafe re-positioned from the beach to an equally speccy river-edge location. A day later, its doors closed due to COVID-19.
Now, savvy owner/chef Joel Cousins and wife Casey have made a seamless transition into our new dining age, stepping up some little food joys, including the chef’s smoking-hot barbecue zone.
The best tables are on the deck, protected or sunny, a skip from the water on one side, the sights and smells of a serious smoker and barbecue on the other.
Joel’s open kitchen does morning tucker until 11.30am, moving into lunch etc until mid-afternoon, sometimes later if the sunshine is encouraging guests to kick on.
My March story was to be about a lunch of mulloway, which I’d happily order again (in season). It’s a typical summery Bombora dish of super fresh local fish, under a crown of bright mango salad. Chips underneath, usually a pet hate, are only slightly softened, soaking up mango salsa sweetness.
At lunch, the bouillabaisse is another good ‘un, the fishy broth embellished with local pippis, squid, prawns and scallops. Each element is cleverly tender. Be sure to soak up every bit of that broth with toasty chunks of good bread.
Or, consider the brekkie-brunch hours, and a nice smoker twist on eggs Benedict including pulled brisket, or pork belly or pork shoulder straight from the long and slow Bombora barbecue treatment. Buenos Dias (good morning in Spanish) is the new fresh corn bread, a Cajun touch giving the smashed-avo brigade a different experience, here with eggs, tomato salsa and a zingy dash of Bloody Mary.
With other Goolwa cafes closed, it’s extra busy times at Bombora, so book ahead. Or, make it a picnic of takeaway on the kid-friendly riverbank lawns. Book a table later, for good coffee and an intense gluten-free, warm chocolate mousse cake.
RIVER JACKS CAFE
340 Riverview Dve, Berri. Ph 8582 4309
Mon-Thurs 8am-4pm, weekends till late
BRUNCH. What a terrific heading for this food column. It can be so many things, cover a small or large part of the day, and cost little, but never a dinner-like lot.
On our travels, we like tucking in, then having the rest of the day to do more. This girls’ getaway, the attraction is the absolute-waterfront River Jacks Cafe in Berri. We’re road testing a whopper motorhome, which is a whole other happy Thelma and Louise story. Rather than give its nifty little kitchen a workout, we’re traversing the Riverland, searching for ways to support and enjoy the regional food-biz battlers of embattled 2020.
On the cafe’s sunny deck, someone more talented, who can actually throw small things, could skip a pebble to the water almost at our feet. Instead we rest easy, with uninterrupted, idyllic, sigh, river views.
A peaceful batch of houseboat dwellers on the opposite bank follow suit. It’s fair to say really good food experiences are rather widely spaced in the Riverland. Travellers seem to be drawn more to the gentle lifestyle and ever-changing majestic river scenery. So, do a little research to find the rare bakery gems, good cafes, quirky breweries and pubs you might like.
This trip, our faves include View Point Cafe and Illalangi Gourmet at Waikerie, the Paringa Bakery near Renmark and a friendly general store serving basic toasties in Swan Reach.
In Berri, we love River Jacks’ kitchen team’s pride in the stream of specialties building on the counter, including a deep and frilly bacon egg and feta filo pie and an authentic fresh slab of Greek spanakopita. The regular morning menu touches all bases, from toasted muesli and egg dishes to mandatory smashed avo plus add-ons that speak of the cafe’s Greek influence.
A buttery croissant filled with gooey Swiss cheese, spinach and pan-fried mushrooms is safe, light and nice. Hot chocolate with a double choc shot, easy on the milk, is “no problem”.
In other times we could linger into wine time and monopolise the serenity, but these days, it’s a setting to be shared.