McLaren Vale: Market 190; Settlement Wines

Market 190: 190 Main Rd, McLaren Vale; 08 8323 8558
Settlement Wines: Seaview Rd, McLaren Vale; 08 8323 7344

A day in the vineyards can be as good as tourism gets. Trestled hills entice you to explore, roses nodding their approval at the end of wine rows as you pass by. Picking the right cellar doors to visit allows you to not only indulge in sampling wines to your taste but also converse with people who tended the grapes, filled the machines at harvest, and nurtured the wine through tanks and testings to the finished product.

Happily, across the world wine and food appreciation go hand in hand, so on top of the oenological experience one can more often than not eat exceptionally well too. It's important that the two go together: it exercises your full taste palate, but, more than that, you also need that sustenance from top-quality produce to get yourself through the tiring business that is wine touring!

The town of McLaren Vale offers a range of food outlets along its Main Street. Set back from the road, Market 190 would be easy to miss, or mistake for a household setting up for a party. As you cross the porch, however, a specials board confirms that this is more than a residence: pancakes with caramelised apple, maple syrup and ice-cream. It was a sign on the footpath, however, that had led us to investigate further: Barista of the Year.

It's a title well-deserved: their coffee is superb. Light brown with a finger-width crema, perfectly roasted and extracted to give a drink bitter with caffeine, but sweet enough to need only a touch of sugar. A very happy start to the day.

The pancakes themselves were excellent: fluffy and, as the picture shows, firm enough to hold their shape. The apple was a great flavour addition, but it would have been better peeled - with the flesh so soft after the cooking process the peel retained some sharp edges! It was an amazing contrast with the pancakes we encountered in Glenelg.

The conundrum of a vineyard trip is volume. Three vineyards is enough in a day if you don't want to exhaust your palate. When one of those vineyards is d'Arenberg, you could retire, sated, to your B&B after visiting just one - they have around thirty wines on tasting, from entry level Stump Jump to the sumptuous Dead Arm shiraz. Exhibiting admirable restraint, we were able to visit Maxwell Wines (also pouring a fine range of mead); Coriole (who have planted the rare Roman Fiano grape; make a booking for their lunch platter); Fox Creek (try the Vixen - sparkling shiraz cab franc); and Pennys Hill (also the cellar door for Mr Riggs and Black Chook - tough place to visit last!).

Lunch was at Settlement Wines, and was as happy an affair as breakfast. They offer four or five pizzas, with all the best of toppings, and sell their wines by the glass, starting at just $5. Our basil, proscuitto and bocconcini pizza was a perfect bracket to the day, enhanced no end by our outlook (above), and buoyed by a glass of Red Dingo, a semi-sweet red wine.

Enzo, Adelaide

308 Port Road, Hindmarsh; 08 8346 2786

John Lethlean wrote this restaurant up a year ago, saying, among other things: 'It's the sort of restaurant we don't see much of any more in Melbourne, and if we do, it's probably in Brunswick or Thornbury. It's daggy; it also has incredible soul...[it's] about rustic authenticity and generosity.'

We almost didn't get there - I rang on Saturday afternoon to book for that night. They were full, and not open on Sunday, the last night of our trip. There were almost tears....but I rang again at 6:30 and they were happy to fit us in after 8pm. Entering the brick-walled, dark-tiled restaurant, we waited a few minutes while they got our table ready in their enclosed porch area, entertained by three strapping young Italian lads with accordion and tambourines, and getting more excited by the second at the aforementioned authenticity. The generosity was evident too, then and later: they apologised about the wait as we were seated and again when we paid our bill - totally unnecessary since they'd fitted us in last minute - and the biggest downer of the night was that the servings were too enormous to feel we could do them justice.

In the normal run of things, a mixed antipasti plate of cured meats and pickled veg would have made a perfect starter. But hey, you can get that anywhere. Instead we got one each: olive ascolane for me, and capesante al lardo for SG.

Olive ascolane consists of green olives, stuffed with pork mince, crumbed and fried. They were an intriguing blend of textures: a gentle crunch from the crumbed outside, the juicy meat interior and, in between, that peculiarly fibrous yet gone-before-you've-savoured-it texture of the olive flesh. Suprisingly, given that combination, it wasn't overly salty or oily; I think quite a bit of care had been taken in putting them together and it almost seemed that the flavours balanced each other out too well: I was expecting more of a flavour hit.

Perhaps it was just because I'd already sampled the capesante: scallops wrapped in pork fat. They were awesome: four fat scallops were enveloped in a shawl of meat, each sitting proudly atop a toasted square of bread. In the centre, spinach topped with labne rounded out the plate with a vegetable and dairy component, to add the fish, carbohydrates and fat on the outside. A balanced, and thoroughly delectable, dish.

We quickly settled on the coniglio cacciatora as one of our mains - rabbit done 'hunter-style'. The fettucine dell'umbria just got the nod over lamb chops cooked over coals. Even in hindsight the latter sounds tantalising, but no more so than housemade pasta with pancetta, mushrooms and a truffle cream sauce.

The coniglio came awash in its own cooking stew: shallots, carrots and whole mushrooms fought to stay afloat. The best part of a whole bunny was sliced in amongst them, extraordinarily tender and so wonderfully flavoured by all that goodness around it. If that's how hunters ate...how did we develop an office culture?

Enzo's fettucine was perfectly pliant, and did a fine job of holding the truffle cream sauce. The sauce showed far more restraint than I, as I chowed down pasta in an attempt to make a dent in the serving before fullness got the better of me.

It's a restaurant to fast for: firstly, so that you can do justice to the servings, and secondly, to treat your palate by reintroducing it to the best produce, prepared simply and traditionally. The experience is made all the more worthwhile by Enzo himself, a man so comfortable working the floor that he knows what his customers need before they ask, sometimes even before they know themselves.

Adelaide breakfast: Drift; The Big Table; Central Market

Drift: 20 Jetty Road; 08 8294 0055
The Big Table: Stall 39 & 40, Adelaide Central Market; 08 8212 3899

In a couple of recent conversations, friends have lamented the lack of innovative breakfast options in Melbourne. Cafes have all jumped on the well-stocked bandwagon of baked eggs, dukkah, savoury french toast, labne etc etc.

It's all relative, however. A stroll along Glenelg's Jetty Road revealed just how limited a breakfast menu can be, and how homogenous cafes can become. It was a sunny Sunday, so there was no shortage of diners, but their breakfast choices didn't extend much further than poached eggs done hollandaise- or benedict-style; muesli or fruit salad; or pancakes with nothing more adventurous than maple syrup and ice cream. Some venues were even charging extra for eggs to be scrambled.

The standard 'gimmick' dish was a breakfast bruschetta, which was the most appealing option to me on Drift's menu. The dish was fine in theory, though suffered a little in execution. The ciabatta's crust was too hard to cut easily, and the bread itself was so fluffy and holey that there wasn't a lot of it! The bacon was the best part of the dish - cut thick and well-cooked without being too crispy. They were generous with the sliced tomato, but it was all a bit much for the bread and a plate of sliced tomato - while no doubt delicious for some - was for me a bit below expectation.

Not being an egg man, SG had little choice other than the pancake, and it was ordinary, to say the least. Thin, dinner-plate sized, not particularly sweet, very doughy, with supermarket maple syrup. Wholly unsatisfying.

Rather more impressive was the breakfast we stumbled upon at Central Market, after landing at 7:20 am (that is, arriving, not when we left Melbourne, when we landed). Adelaide's Central Market is on a more manageable scale than the monolithic Queen Vic Markets in Melbourne. There are a lot more bakers and some shops, such as Grind (teas and coffees), have their main outlets within the markets.

The Big Table has been there for years and is known for its takeaway baguettes, which were being prepared with admirable efficiency in the teeny space ringed by counter space on three sides and a kitchen on the fourth.

For breakfast I had mushrooms lathered in Big Table's own pesto, on a fresh, crusty baguette. It was just delicious - the mushrooms so earthy and springy, and the pesto creamy enough that it clung to the funghi, but basilly enough that it didn't feel over indulgent.

SG chose a winner with a Magic Strawberry Milkshake - it was, indeed, magical. My beverage was chai from nearby Grind - brewed on water, not milk, but spicy enough to still deliver a kick.

Not sure if this was the source of the mushrooms on my breakfast dish, but, oh, for one of these at our local shops (that is, a dedicated Mushroom Shop).
Returning to the markets later that afternoon for provisions, we visited the Euroasian foodstore, selling both Russian- and Chinese-style dumplings. Run by perhaps the sweetest counterhand in the city, we rested our walked-out feet while they steamed up a fresh batch of beef and onion dumplings. They tasted more interesting than this photo looks, with a winning dough around an acceptable meat filling.

The rest of the weekend saw me returning again and again to a market-sourced snack of brioche-style croissant smeared with an extraordinary White Pearl camembert from Tasmanian Heritage, and an astounding caramelised fig paste, flavoured with star anise and fennel.