Eating in South Australia

A couple of weeks ago my family drove up to South Australia. We stayed mainly in Adelaide which is a beautiful city. I loved the old buildings however I only had my digital camera with me, not the DSLR and it was always at night when we walked by them so I didn't manage to take many decent photos.
But this is my food blog so I'm only going to post the food I had on the trip in this post. If I have time I'll do a post on all the non food aspects of the trip on my other blog (which you can find if you click "view complete profile" in the about me section).

I don't remember all the names of every place we ate at, let alone dish names and prices.

Day 1:
At lunch at a Cafe in Horsham. Spinach, pumpkin and ricotta pie $8ish. Lots of variety in the salad.

Went Cafe Kowloon, Chinatown in Adelaide for dinner. 

We were feeling pretty adventurous that night, we chose a stir fried crocodile dish and fish poached in chilli stock/oil (水煮鱼)

This was sooooo chilli it was like delicious torture. Good to try everything once right?

These seaweed beans were good to counteract the chilli fish.

Day 2:
Went to the oldest German town in Australia, Hahndorf, and ate lunch there. We ended up at a little cafe which was actually run by an Asian (Korean?) couple and tried some German sausages which were very good.

That night we found ourselves in Chinatown once again trying a restaurant which is very famous in Melbourne.
NOODLE KINGDOM where we ordered the exact same two bowls of noodles we did when we went to the Preston one in Melbourne. The menu and prices are the exactly the same.

The sauce bottles were DISGUSTINGLY DIRTY

The Lanzhou Beef Noodles

These beef skewers were the hit of the night. Well marinated but very oily.

The spicy lamb noodles. Disappointingly bad compared to the ones at Preston.

Overall: Adelaide Noodle Kingdom sucks compared to the Preston Noodle Kingdom.

Day 3:
Headed up to the Barossa Valley and had lunch at Maggie Beer's Farm Shop. I loved the shop and I think I tried/tasted every product. I really regret not buying a bottle of vino cotto as both my brother and I loved it, but I'm pretty sure you can get it here anyways.

Pheasant Farm Pate was my favourite out of all the pate's and we got the big sized tub because we LOVE our pate. It was rich and the jelly had an intense flavour, however I wasn't a fan of the peppercorn/berry things on the top.

For dessert we got a creme caramel each because no one wanted to share. I actually really liked the slight bitterness to the caramel as it gave a sharp edge to the eggy rich custard.

And of course we had Chinese for dinner again BUT this was probably one of the better/top chinese meals I've had all year. The restaurant actually isn't in Chinatown, it's on Grote St, newly renovated, very spacious and slightly grand. The place is called J Restaurant and I don't know why it only has 75% on Urbanspoon but it definitely deserves higher. Exceptional value, I have no idea how they make money.

Well braised pork trotter/hock/leg. Glistening with lots of sauce to dip the meat into, great with rice.

Deep fried eggplant $10ish Crispy outside, soft inside.

Chinese celery, tofu and bamboo. Nice and refreshing.

Fried cripsy duck. Boneless duck is of course a winner =]

Fried fish, looked and tasted great.

My favourite dish of the night. The crab!! Spicy and finger lickingly good. There was so much crab that we couldn't finish it (7 people...) The crab itself wasn't the freshest but the sauce and the lotus root and other vegetables were very good. When you finish half of it they come and retop the sauce and add some more vegies to it. And it was ONLY $22.50. 


Only downside to the restaurant was that there was msg used (which is very common for chinese restaurants).

Day 4:
I didn't take a picture of lunch but it was Fish and Chips down at Victor Harbour. We went to a place that was runners up in the South Australian Fish and Chip competition or something like that. It was pretty good I must say. Not the best but up there.

Since the weather was so nice in Adelaide we couldn't resist getting ice creams. I'm actually quite surprised how well this photo turned out, I could almost just lick the screen. Cookies and Cream =]

We then went to Glenelg where we walked the entire main street trying to choose where to eat and finally gave up when we reached the end and chose Glenelg bbq inn. Little did we know that this would be the most memorable meal of the trip.

Mixed Grill $26.5
There is actually a large sausage and a lamb shaslick (kebab) under that steak.

Mixed Grill $23
Same as above except a chicken shaslick instead of lamb.

Porterhouse Steak 400g $25
Dad suggested I get the 400g instead of the 250g as it was only $3.5 more. I came to regret it as this steak was the biggest slab of meat I ever tackled. At least an inch thick an about the size of my hand I struggled but somehow managed to finish it. The char/crust was delicious, cooked medium rare as I requested.

T-Bone 850g+ $30
I have no idea how my brother managed to eat it all. It was the size my face and probably about an inch thick.
Keep in mind that my brother is probably one of the skinniest guys around, except he has a bottomless stomach.

Day 5:
Lunch we ate at KFC in Port Adelaide and I must say it was probably the best and biggest KFC I've had in YEARS. I think we all know what KFC looks like. Loved the Hot and Spicy Chicken.

For dinner we went to Mandoo Korean Dumplings which is a bit of a hole-in-the-wall kinda place. It is run by a Korean family which are extremely welcoming and kind hearted.

We had the Mandoo-jeongol for 4 $45
It was a really nice warming meal with lots of vegies to make us feel better after all the meat we had been eating. The dumplings weren't a hit as they were incredibly dry inside but it was fun discovering which dumpling you got as there were 3 or 4 different ones. I liked the corn one the most, the kimchi one was a little too strange for me.

Day 6:
We headed down to Mt Gambier and stopped at a town by the sea which I have already forgotten the name of. There I had a great cranberry chicken and avocado foccacia, something I must recreate for lunch.

That night we ate at what seemed to be the most popular restaurant in Mt Gambier on a Tuesday night, Wild Ginger. 

Thai Fish Cakes $7.90
The sauce was great but that was really all that was going for it.

The prawn special that night.
Very generous, succulent prawns and crunchy vegetables.

Phad thai $17.90
Nothing spectacular but still very tasty.

Matsaman curry $20.90 (of course we had to try it after Masterchef)
Tender falling apart beef with lots of spices. The pickled dish on the side was a good contrast to the rich curry.

Phad Char Seafood $21.90
This one was on the spicier side with lots of perfectly cooked seafood and vegetables.

Dessert of black sticky rice with coconut milk. So nice but so full.

Day 7:
Lunch bought some pies from the local bakery in Port Fairy, they sucked.

Went to Laksa King for dinner, completely packed and had to kill an hour to wait for our table. Can't say 100% worth the wait, but it was still some pretty damn good laksa. That area is starting to become MalaysiaTown with Chillipadi, Ampang Tofu, Chef Legenda all in that strip.

That concludes the South Australia trip. Took me almost 2 hours to get all the photos in and type up this post.

Up next
-Mussels with garlic chilli butter
-My Wicked Wings