You used to drive out of Adelaide for a winery lunch. Now, increasingly, you drive out for dinner. Three of the most interesting new dining rooms in the state have opened on regional main streets, and none of them are at a vineyard.
Tread Lightly, Willunga
Newly opened on Willunga’s High Street, Tread Lightly is an underground cellar in the literal sense – you descend a flight of slate stairs into a softly lit room that feels closer to a wine bar in Adelaide’s east end than a country restaurant. Owners Will and Trina KayMcPhail have built a menu of snacks, smaller plates and larger plates that leans hard on hyper-local Fleurieu produce, with a wine list dominated by McLaren Vale producers like Coriole, Aphelion and Willunga 100. Grilled mussel skewers with fermented chilli sambal sit alongside scallop crudo with green tomato and lime kosho. The larger plates are where the kitchen’s confidence shows: a beetroot tarte tatin with zucchini baba ganoush, confit rabbit leg with toasted barley salsa, a hibachi lion’s mane mushroom that earns its place as a main rather than an afterthought. Walk-ins only, except for groups of five or more.
29 High Street, Willunga
@treadlightlywillunga
Spaghetti Head, Aldgate
A short drive up the freeway to the Hills brings you to Spaghetti Head, which over the last four years has become one of the Adelaide Hills’ most loved dinner rooms. Run by Ash Sleiman and Amanda Cordina, the Aldgate eatery makes its pasta fresh in-house every day, with dedicated menus for vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free diners alongside the classics. The signature dish – also called the Spaghetti Head – is a deceptively simple plate of garlic, chilli, parsley, Grana Padano and crispy pangrattato. The room is small and open-style, with diners watching pasta being made in plain sight. Sunday sittings have a bottomless pasta-and-cocktail-jug arrangement, particularly worth booking as the weather cools.
232 Mount Barker Road, Aldgate
spaghettiheadadl.com.au
Taco Jose, McLaren Vale
Tucked into the courtyard of an 1860s McLaren Vale church – alongside sister restaurant Joe’s at Sabella – Taco Jose is the most casual of the three, and the most singular. Co-owner Timmy Forster spent a year living in Sinaloa, and the menu reflects it: corn tortillas only, no cheese, every protein wood-grilled over a hand-cranked parrilla. Three tacos for $20. A rice and beans dish. Street chips with what the kitchen calls a “shrine of condiments.” Drink agua de Jamaica, the hibiscus iced tea Mexicans swear by, or a mezcal slushie. The 40-seat kiosk runs Friday to Sunday only and isn’t designed to linger in. You eat well, quickly, then walk it off in the vines.
133 Main Road, McLaren Vale
tacojose.com
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