Mad March in Adelaide: Clipsal 500, Womadelaide, Long Lunches and more

There is something for everyone — from motor-sport fans to foodies — in Adelaide during Mad March.

The Clipsal 500 will offer more wine bars this year, for the cultured V8 fan.

Adelaide’s annual festival season, known as Mad March, is more than ever as much about exploring the city’s foodie evolution as it is about attending an array of arts, sports, music and social events packed into the weeks ahead.

As South Australia’s capital continues its transformation into one of the best small cities in the world, with new bars and restaurants continually popping up, its food and wine composition, which has attracted international attention, is increasingly being incorporated into events.

The culinary renaissance is being led from the top, with the state government last year spending $35 million on a campaign targeting visitors from Sydney and Melbourne. The investment is paying off — Lonely Planetnamed South Australia as one of the world’s top 10 regions to visit in 2017.

“South Australia is home to some of the country’s best produce and Adelaide is one of the world’s great wine capitals, so we’re thrilled about our reputation ahead of our first annual Tasting Australia festival,” Tourism Minister Leon Bignell says.

ADELAIDE FRINGE , Until March 19. The world’s largest fringe arts festival outside Edinburgh has it all, from acrobats and vaudeville to shows dedicated to food and wine, including interactive and immersive experiences. The Utopian State Dinner Club, which runs for three hours on Friday and Saturday nights, is an “immersive supper club on the riverbank”. It’s held in a new-look Royal Croquet Club, which has relocated from the heart of the CBD in Victoria Square to the Pinky Flat precinct by the River Torrens, in the shadow of Adelaide Oval. The supper club is hosted by Nick Stock, with food by Adelaide chef Andre Ursini. Other food and wine-related ringe events include the Post Dining “culinary journey” at Adelaide Central Market; The Wine Bluffs, featuring self-styled “sommeliers of comedy” Damian Callinan and Paul Calleja; a Beer versus Wine Degustation Dinner, hosted by Barossa Valley Brewing; and Beer in the Burbs, a tour of suburban brew spots, including Pirate Life Brewery, the Wheatsheaf Hotel and Big Shed Brewing.

If a more genteel outing is more to your taste, you can always relax with an elegant and glamorous Jazz High Tea outing at the Royal Croquet Club.

ADELAIDE FESTIVAL OF ARTS , until March 19. After taking a break last year from running its own eating and drinking venue, the Festival of Arts has returned in dazzling style with the Riverbank Palais, a two-storey floating entertainment and dining venue that has been built on the River Torrens off Elder Park as the hub of the festival.

RIVERBANK PALAIS AND PARK PALAIS, until March 19. The new Riverbank Palais is a nod to Adelaide’s nightlife in the 1920s, when an ornate floating ballroom known as The Floating Palais was hailed as the “Taj Mahal of the Torrens” and the “most distinctive and beautiful place of entertainment in the Common-wealth”.

The surrounding Elder Park precinct becomes “Parc Palais” for the 2017 Festival. Gill Minervini (Dark MOFO Winter Feast) and Duncan Welgemoed (Africola, Lola’s Pergola) will curate the gastronomic delights for the Riverbank Palais while Parc Palais will feature food from Brad Sappenbergh’s Comida (Adelaide’s Central Market).

It features more than 60 free and ticketed acts involving more than 130 artists and special guests. There will be paella, a flaming fire pit with free-range pigs and lamb on giant spits, and delicious locally sourced ingredients from whiting and chips, oysters and prawn cocktails to vegetarian delights cooked over the flames. And breakfast for the early risers.

Duncan Welgemoedi, Cath Kerry and Gill Minervin prepare for the Riverbank Palais Long Lunch series

LONG LUNCH SERIES , until March 19. Held each weekend throughout the festival, and set on the River Torrens, the Riverbank Palais Long Lunches will bring together some of the country’s top chefs, all of whom have a personal connection to Adelaide, in a celebration of South Australian food and wine.

Each of the six three-hour lunch events is helmed by a different Australian chef: Cheong Liew (Neddy’s, The Grange); Cath Kerry (Petaluma, Art Gallery Restaurant); Christine Manfield (Paramount, East@West, Universal); Mark Best (Marque, Pei Modern); Michael Ryan (Range, Provenance) and Karl Firla (est. Restaurant, Oscillate Wildly).

About 210 guests at each lunch will feast on a three-course menu designed to share, plus canapes, in a communal setting on board the Riverbank Palais.

Its curated by Minervini in conjunction with Welgemoed; diners are taken on a journey through a chef’s culinary story while also paying tribute to the 1980s.

Organisers say the 80s were a time of culinary creativity, fusion and experimentation in Adelaide, which spawned game-changing restaurants such as Liew’s famed Neddy’s, Possums in North Adelaide and Petaluma, and launched a generation of talented young chefs.

Chef Cath Kerry, who has been involved in Adelaide’s food scene since the late 60s, has come out of retirement to kick off the lunch series. Her menu will pay tribute to the star chefs who formed Adelaide’s food identity in the 80s, including Phillip Searle (Possums, Oasis Seros), Michael Symons and Jennifer Hillier (Uraidla Aristologist), and Gabriel Gate with a menu of dishes inspired by the era.

ADELAIDE OVAL , until March 11. The world famous cricket ground got a $535 million upgrade a few years ago and this year continues its evolution as a multi-event stadium with the Live On 5 Terrace Bar for the fringe.

Open from 5pm Tuesday to Friday and from 11am on Saturday and Sunday, this buzzing fringe hub takes over Level 5 of the imposing Riverbank Stand, with spectacular CBD views, cocktails and an array of food options. The main stage for fringe acts is built high into the seating bowl with Adelaide Oval as the backdrop.

WOMADELAIDE , March 10-13. WOMADelaide offers a diverse selection of international cuisines to enjoy with the music in the wonderful surrounds of Adelaide’s Botanic Park, including offerings from Cantina Kangaroo Island, Dinkydi Oysters, Four Seeds, Hanuman Restaurant Adelaide, Johnny Cougar’s Melon Camp, Let Them Eat, Moorish Bites, Parwana and Squid Inc.

Adelaide’s Jessie Spiby, from MasterChef 2015, is bringing her food stall Jessie Does Food to WOMADelaide for the first time, offering modern Australian inspired cuisine with lots of elements of Nordic cuisine as well as some Asian elements.

Poh Ling Yeow will be at the Taste The World Restaurant

TASTE THE WORLD PROGRAM , WOMADelaide, March 10-13. The ever popular Taste the World program, hosted by South Australian food identity Rosa Matto, is essentially a cooking presentation involving WOMADelaide artists such as the Hot 8 Brass Band (New Orleans) and Ana Tijoux (Latin America). Matto and featured artists get together in an intimate marquee during the four days of the world music festival as they celebrate the food and culture of their home countries, punctuated with musical interludes and intimate personal anecdotes.

STREET IN THE PARK — TASTE THE WORLD RESTAURANT , WOMADelaide, March 10-13. The acclaimed Taste the World restaurant is back for WOMAD­elaide, but replacing top chef and native ingredient advocate Jock Zonfrillo (Orana, Blackwood) is TV cook Poh Ling Yeow. Poh will bring her Jamface cafe to the Botanic Park WOMADelaide’s restaurant this year with dishes inspired by childhood memories of her birth country, Malaysia. Guests will be served a six-dish banquet including dessert in dedicated fine-dining, sit-down lunch and dinner sessions under century-old trees in the Botanic Park.

Warming up for the Clipsal 500.

CLIPSAL 500, until March 5. The Concert Green — a pop-up hit of last year’s four-day Clipsal 500 Adelaide street circuit car race event — is back, bigger and better. This chilled-out area under the trees features bars, food outlets, relaxed seating and a superscreen, so you can keep an eye all the V8 on-track action. Don’t believe your average V8 racing fan can be cultured? Organisers of this year’s hugely popular Clipsal 500 Adelaide street circuit car race think otherwise and have opened more wine bars in Pit Exit.

ADELAIDE WRITERS WEEK , until March 9. Author Amy Stewart has taken experts and novices alike into her garden, be it with drunken botany, diabolical insects, wicked weeds — even earthworms. A special event for the annual Writers Week festival is The Drunken Botanist — a three-course meal and matching wine lunch with the New York Times bestselling author, known for her books on horticulture as well as on crime. This two-hour lunch on March 7 is curated by Sydney-born chef Paul Baker (head chef of The Botanic Gardens Restaurant) in the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, promising a leisurely conversation about the botanical world.

ADELAIDE CUP , March 13. There’s more than horseracing at this year’s Adelaide Cup Day, with a new trackside entertainment enclosure featuring gourmet food vans, cocktail bars and live music from leading Australian acts. Grab pizza from McLaren Vale’s Pizzateca, which will pop up at Morphettville for the races alongside top-end South Australian food vans Daisy Burger, Sooki Lala and Feisty Filomena. Coffee caravan The People vs Coffee will serve espresso martinis, among other beverages. Premium cocktail bars include Mr Mixer and the famed Yellowglen Terrace.

CAN’T MAKE IT IN MAD MARCH? Come back in May for Tasting Australia (April 30 to May 7). The team behind the popular food and wine festival, which includes co-creative director and chef Simon Bryant, last year announced its success would see it return as an annual event. The state government has supported the shift from biennial. Highlights this year include an increased focus on wine, such as a six-decade guided tasting of Grange and masterclasses at East End Cellars. There will be a showpiece restaurant, The Glasshouse Kitchen, in Victoria Square, a Dining with Spirits degustation dinner at Bibliotheca Bar & Book Exchange, and a high tea at the Mayfair Hotel’s Mayflower Restaurant.