Restaurant review: Orana, Adelaide

285 Rundle Street, Adelaide, Australian-Scandinavian.

Different: Suffolk Lamb, karkalla & fermented native elderberry. Picture: Kelly Barnes

CHEF arrives at the big, 1960s, Danish-inspired timber table with sorbet on a spoon made of animal horn.

It’s a break between a long series of intriguing nibbles and the more substantial dishes to follow. He tells us the sorbet is made with just four ingredients: sugar, water, salt and ... what? (If we can guess, the champagne is free.) It is white, perfectly smooth and refreshing, suggesting lime and pepper, yet neither. Of course: green ants.

It’s one of many surprise moments at Orana, above Adelaide’s bustling Rundle Street, where expat Scot Jock Zonfrillo is trying to fuse the spirit of Copenhagen’s Noma with that of the Never-Never. I doubt indigenous Australian ingredients and modern, Scandinavian-inspired foraging and “cooking” have been put together before as they are here. It is brave, thought-provoking and occasionally great.

There will be times during “Alkoopina” (the name of their long, long tasting menu) that you’ll want to quietly recede into your own private world to savour the flavours, textures and sheer quality of the produce. The prawn, for example, a piece of Spencer Gulf perfection, grilled and sprinkled with the citric-like powder of dehydrated Davidson plum and a touch of salt. Cured pieces of red mullet with bullrush ash. Beautiful slices of raw Coorong mulloway scattered with ruby saltbush, wild rocket flowers and sea celery juice. It is South Australia’s own sashimi.

Or, served on a piece of stone, pieces of raw, marinated, dry-aged venison garnished with mulberry. Coorong cockles with sea blight juice. A “spoon sweet” of samphire and smoked kangaroo that emulates the mouthfeel of risotto. Unpasteurised goat milk cheese and cream with riberry leaves.

On the other side of the ledger? Kangaroo Island marron tail with a dusting of citronella-like Geraldton wax that overwhelms the natural sweetness of this excellent crustacean. And a strangely pedestrian plate of Suffolk lamb rump and liver (pictured), karkalla and fermented native elderberry. The liver is overcooked and the flavours, well, slightly discordant. Different, yes; startling, no.

Zonfrillo’s cuisine will have most patrons grappling with a whole new food vocabulary. And if there is a leitmotif here, it is the astringency that native ingredients bring to these dishes. Mostly, it is welcome.

I’ve mentioned only part of the Orana panoply, a procession that arrives with no written menu and no accurate idea of what it’s all costing, either. But I’ll cut to the chase: this is not my kind of restaurant, despite its novelty, a couple of good waiters and a terrific sommelier whose list is interesting and well priced. Orana takes the punters-as-audience notion too far - and I’m up for that kind of malarkey more than most. There’s an assumption we want to be constantly briefed, let in on every ingredient’s provenance, exposed to the chef’s personality. As my guest observed, dinner was not about us, but them. The chef, specifically. Only it cost us $480 with a tip.

Rather than intimacy, there is a sense of being exposed here, of waiting at the table for the next act. Orana’s website describes Zonfrillo thus: “Not really human, more force of nature. The creator.” Well, it’s his website. Me, I still want expensive dinners to be about hospitality, not the host. To be about me, not the chef. Old-fashioned, I know.

Address: 285 Rundle Street, Adelaide
Phone: [phone] Web: restaurantorana.com
Hours: Lunch Fri; dinner Tue-Sat
Typical prices: Set menu $155, plus drinks
Summary: Bold and almost beautiful
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Rating: 3 out of 5