2016 Advertiser Food Awards: All the winners

WHICH restaurant was named SA’s best in the 2016 Advertiser Food Awards? And who is SA’s best chef? Find out who won all the food awards here.

4 min read

November 7, 2016 - 11:12PM

Lachlan Colwill, of Hentley Farm, which won the 2016 Advertiser Food award for best restaurant. Picture: Matt Turner

WHICH restaurant was named SA’s best in the 2016 Advertiser Food Awards? And who is SA’s best chef? Find out who won all the food awards here.

Vittoria Coffee Restaurant of the Year / Best Regional Restaurant

Hentley Farm

The elements that raise the Hentley Farm dining experience above the other contenders for this award are as subtle, as various and as expertly crafted as its celebrated Discovery degustation menu. There’s the setting, now with its new extension, a glass cube that hovers on the edge of the creek. There’s the friendly ease with which wait and kitchen staff invite you to share chef Lachlan Colwill’s vision. And then there is the food itself, from paired quenelles of chicken liver parfait and tuna under cloches of iceberg lettuce, to tiny Kitchener bun petit fours.

Chefs of the Year

Scott Huggins and Emma McCaskill (Magill Estate/Magill Estate Kitchen)

Where do they find the time? Partners in life and the kitchen, Scott Huggins and Emma McCaskill now run two eateries of the highest standard. The original Magill Estate Restaurant has now been joined by its daytime sibling Magill Estate Kitchen and, despite their wildly different personalities, they each are given the same degree of love and attention.

Vittoria Coffee Adelaide Food Legends

Frank and Maria Favaro (Chianti)

True hospitality, the kind that keeps customers coming back time after time, takes the right people skills and a whole lot of hard work. For our Adelaide Food Legends, it comes naturally. Over more than three decades, and numerous changes in dining fashion, that special brand of service has been a trademark of Frank and Maria Favaro at Chianti.

Yalumba Best New Restaurant

The Olfactory Inn

Simon Burr in the kitchen and his partner Lauren Alexander on the floor have created a restaurant full of charm and comfort. Simon’s country cooking, with a few contemporary touches, is perfect for the location, whether you are a local or passing through.

Best Italian

Osteria Oggi

In a space that’s at once style-savvy and welcoming as a nonna’s kitchen, this modern-day Osteria ticks all the boxes with a professional floor crew, great wine list and innovative menu featuring house-made pasta slicked with both traditional and inventive sauces.

Best Asian

FermentAsian

Tuoi Do creates lipsmacking South-East Asian food inspired by seasonal pickings from a garden tended by her parents. Her flavours jump with the zing of fresh herbs and beautifully crafted hot, salty, sour, sweet and umami sauces. Add the instructional, inspirational wine list constructed by partner Grant Dickson (see below) and this Barossa gem is the complete package.

Best Chinese

Concubine

In a precinct where there’s a fair bit of so-so, cheap Chinese food and throwdown service, Concubine provides a much needed top-end experience, starting with a friendly welcome, encouraging and generous table attendance and a drinks list and glassware that shows a commitment to the total dining deal.

Best Indian

Cinnamon Club

When forsaking a perfectly good local to travel across town for a curry doesn’t seem an imposition, you know you are on to a winner. Cinnamon Club is just that, with its multi-regional culinary adventure in a colourful setting on The Parade. Naan is created with a deft, lighter-than-usual hand and the hot and creamy Nawabi goat curry is particularly recommended.

Best Community Restaurant

New Local Eatery

This is the restaurant everyone wishes was in their neighbourhood. Chef-owner Daniel Blencowe’s local eatery, not so ‘new’ after a successful first year, is a favourite for its modern global flavours and flexible, ever-changing menus.

Best Service

Sarah Holloway (Salopian Inn)

The skills of one of the state’s best teams are epitomised by a waiter who is warm, enthusiastic and, critically, can read a group of customers and recognise how they should be approached. It’s a talent that, along with her engaging personality, makes everyone feel at ease.

Best Wine List

FermentAsian

FermentAsian’s groundbreaking South-East Asian focused menu seems at first to defy accepted patterns of food and wine matching. It’s when you are handed co-owner Grant Dickson’s extraordinary wine list that you realise the art of drinking great wine is as much a part of this gastronomic experience as the dining.

Best Cheap Eats

Modinetti

From the warm hospitality to the generous serves and authentic flavours, Modinetti is a slice of Italy in suburban Adelaide. It’s all about “cucina povera” — peasant food. Dishes such as pasta with fagioli (beans) and cotoletta (schnitzel) hit the nail in flavour from the homeland. And prices range from $9 for soups, while larger items hover around the $16 mark.

Best Lunch in the CBD

Peel St

Peel St continues to blow guests away with its buzzing dining room vibes and mesmerising blackboard menu of mostly Thai and Middle Eastern/Med dishes. With its flexible format of smaller and larger serves, explained and delivered by some of the smartest floor staff around, it’s the lunch spot city workers return to again and again — provided they can nab a table.

Best Cafe

Coffee Barun

Wedged between sprawling car yards with views of trucks whizzing past on Main North Rd, Coffee Barun is probably the last place you’d expect to find Adelaide’s finest brew, but that’s all part of its charm. Throw in a menu full of breakfast and lunch options and it’s easy to see why it is so loved by its legion of fans.

Best Bar

Pink Moon Saloon

An ambitious, charming spot that exemplifies the creative spirit of Adelaide’s bar scene. The wooden cabins built from scratch in a tiny Leigh Street alleyway offer a solid menu, largely cooked in the wood oven out back, a taut range of drinks of the highest calibre and excellent service.