Adelaide for food lovers: Central Market tour and Cheong Liew fine dining
For those who like their food, Adelaide is a great city. David Whitley gets an indoctrination into the South Australian capital’s restaurant scene, meets Asian fusion superstar Cheong Liew at the Hilton hotel’s Grange restaurant and takes a tour of Adelaide Central Market.
Stone-grilled meat and Malaysian restaurants
It doesn’t take long to realise that the people of Adelaide love their food. The most unpromising-looking pubs will boast that their meats are “stone-grilled” while Malaysian restaurants that would be drab anywhere else adopt a jazz theme and have artworks all over the wall in a bid to compete.
Providore stall and tour at Adelaide Central market
That’s just the lower end of the scale. For the real foodies, there is the Central Market. It’s the biggest market in the southern hemisphere, according to Mark Gleeson.
Mark has run the Providore stall for 20 years, and when he’s not selling olive oil and deliciously naughty cakes, he runs tours around the market.
“It’s exclusively food – no franchises, no chains, no souvenir stalls, no T-shirts, no bric-a-brac,” says Mark with a scarcely contained pride as he leads off a jaunt through the stalls.
On the way, we stop for chats with the stallholders; an Italian mushroom importer, an extremely popular butcher and a Polish immigrant specialising in the treats and delicacies of Central Europe.
Each one seems more passionate about their produce than the next, and it’s these characters that turn the tour into a proper experience rather than a man walking around stalls pointing at vegetables. Oh, and the regular tastings of cheeses, meat strips, yoghurts and tarts helps as well.
Sophisticated food scene
“The food scene here is phenomenal. Very sophisticated,” says Mark. “Adelaide is surrounded by great food and market gardens, while the supply chain from farmer to consumer is very good. There are some real champions out there.”
His enthusiasm is replicated by the other stall holders. Marco Marinelli, the Mushroom Man, is delighted to announce that the local mushroom growers are the best in Australia. Tony from O’Connell Meats says he wouldn’t dream of getting lamb from anywhere else.
Mark is also at pains to point out that immigration has played a huge part in the development of Adelaide’s food scene. Indeed, the stall-holders seem to come from all over the world; France, Poland, Italy, Cambodia, Croatia… even Kazakhstan.
Cheong Liew at the Grange Restaurant
The most famous immigrant on the Adelaide food scene, however, is Cheong Liew. The occasional TV star is in charge of the menu at the city’s most lavish dining experience – the Grange Restaurant at the Hilton hotel.
Cheong was born in Malaysia, but came to Australia to study engineering in 1969. He quickly decided that it was food he cared about, and ended up working in sandwich cafes, wine bars, Greek restaurants and pseudo-French steakhouses. He made a few improvements to the food wherever he could, such as introducing crunchy Asian-style vegetables instead of the boiled-to-death Anglo variety.
Eventually, he opened his own restaurant – the wildly popular Neddy’s on Hutt Street – and it was there that he became regarded as the founder of Asian fusion cuisine.
Cheong says that he still reads voraciously to take in ideas from across the world – he’s never had any formal training – and he’s just as likely adapt a recipe or technique from his Lithuanian mother-in-law as an old Asian tradition.
“Adelaide is very fortunate,” he says. “It has very good ingredients. And you can get them directly from the source, rather than through a middleman as in Melbourne and Sydney. You know more about the product.”
Medium-priced restaurants in Adelaide
Cheong also argues that Adelaide has a fantastic restaurant scene – particularly in the medium price range. He regards it as a great sign that the locals don’t to have a particular loyalty to one spot – people will eat everywhere.
He’s particularly keen on the Bridgewater Mill in the Adelaide Hills and the foodie strip of Gouger Street.
Migration of Ideas at The Grange
But it’s his Migration of Ideas menu at The Grange that is regarded as the city’s major gourmet splurge. It features his breathtakingly intricate Four Dances of the Sea signature dish plus seven other courses of thorough indulgence. It’s the sort of menu where poached Wagyu beef with Pinot Noir sauce can be thrown in almost as a flighty aside.
It takes five chefs to produce the meal, each working to their own speciality and while Cheong ostensibly watches in a relaxed manner, he’s clearly paying hawk-like attention to what’s going on. When he’s not certain about the wine that’s been matched with a dish, he immediately calls out for a glass of it to make sure someone hasn’t made a mistake.
Goodlife Pizza
But while Cheong rules the roost at the Grange, his former haunt is in new hands. Neddy’s is now GoodLife Pizza, and it’s clearly one of the most popular eateries in town. A good few steps above your average Dominos, GoodLife beats its chest about high quality, locally produced and organic ingredients. Naturally, the pizzas taste terrific – in Adelaide, even the pizza joints are run by people who care about their food.
Details: The Chef’s Media tour of Adelaide Central Market runs on Thursday, Friday and Saturday mornings. It starts at Stall 66 – Mark Gleeson’s Providore stall – and runs for an hour-and-a-half. It costs $45 per person.
Cheong Liew’s Migration of Ideas menu in the Grange Restaurant at the Hilton, Adelaide costs $169 per person. The accompanying ‘Wine Journey’ costs $89, and a $50 surcharge is applied for private or in-kitchen dining.
GoodLife Pizza can be found at 170 Hutt Street, Adelaide.
This article was originally written for Australian Associated Press
