Quick Chop! Enjoy Adelaide and its food...Ensalada

The February/March period in Adelaide, to me, is the best time of the year to visit and explore this city.  The Fringe, Adelaide Festival and Splash Adelaide are in full swing.  So whilst everyone is out experiencing Adelaide art scene, why not also take the opportunity to explore Adelaide's food scene?

The great thing about such festivals is that a lot of the restaurants will typically set stalls up as part of the festivities allowing the public to taste their fares.  The Garden of Unearthly Delights, Gluttony, Barrio and Ensalada (just to name a few) are locations where one can try out some awesome food.

So in the Fringe spirit, The Chopping Board will try to release a number of Quick Chops outlining some of the new and quirky places / foods that are available to the public!  To start off, Ensalada Bar.

Ensalada Bar is a new attraction to the Fringe Festival.  Located in between the Garden of Unearthly Delights and Gluttony, this narrow garden bar provides great music, drinks and food in a fun and quirkly location.

Cool open-air roof design @ Ensalada

Flatbread Cafe-Mart - Mile End - great little find!

I spend a lot of time out of the office these days, and the majority of it on Greenhill Rd. So, as a team, we are always looking to get out for lunch. We usually hit up Bar 9, Paddys Lantern, Vili's Cafe or Lawash. After speaking to another friend who works in the area, she recommended we try Flatbread Cafe Mart, on Henley Beach Rd, Mile End, Adelaide. Great flat bread pizzas at a bargain price - I'm sold.

I convinced the team, based upon this recommendation, to not head to Lawash one day, and we headed down to Flatbread Cafe Mart. From the outside, it looks clean and inviting. Inside, you see an array of different pizzas in the fridge and a gas fired oven in the back corner where they are heated up!

The menu

Quick Chop - Little Miss Mexico

For those of you who may not be aware, Little Miss Mexico is a new bar that has popped up on Grenfell Street next to the Crown and Anchor.

Little Miss Mexico is a bar/beer garden that is run by the same guys that own the Food Truck, La Cantina Co.  As the name suggests this place serves food and beverages and is a great place to catch up with friends during the summer months.   

British India's Thali Room - better than average curries, swanky setting

After hearing some positive things about British India's Thali Room, we decided to organise to try the place one Saturday night. According to Wikipedia (reliable source of course!), Thali is an Indian meal made up of a selection of various dishes. The way British India's Thali Room works is that each Thali comes with a set of  standard dishes, as well as naan and rice, which are then paired with a curry of your choice. Tonight the  set dishes included vegetable curry, daal, yoghurt raita and chicken tikka salad. Between the four of us, four different curries were chosen with these being butter chicken (Punjabi Thali), vindaloo (Goan Thali), prawn (Malabar Thali) and Tikka Masala (Shimla Thali).

So many curries!

Nghi Ngan Quan - quantity but not quality

Nghi Ngan Quan was my favourite Vietnamese restaurant for weekend lunches until I found this place.  That was nearly two years ago.  When my brother called me up for lunch and said he was going to Nghi Ngan Quan, I jumped at the opportunity to revisit one of my favourites.

I barely recognised the place when I stepped in.  It used to actually look like a Vietnamese restaurant that served Pho and Combination rice.  Now, it looks more like a haberdashery outlet thats got tacky ornaments, mirrors, water fountains, paintings and furniture that just doesn't look right.  Anyway, on with the food!

Sotos - More than likely Adelaide's best Fish and Chips

On most days, during the warmer months, you are almost guaranteed that you will find a massive line at Sotos. Why? Because, in many opinions, it is the best fish and chips in Adelaide. I hear you, that's a big call you say? Well, I've eaten a lot, not taken pictures of many, and this is as good as it gets. I hear you, where is this Sotos you say? Semaphore! What's so great about Sotos?

Ping Pong does National Wog Day!

Can anyone guess why my pseudonym is Ping Pong? Well it's because I'm Chinese and apparently we're great at Ping Pong! Which makes it funny that I spent last Saturday making litres and litres (a whole years worth!) of passata  with my boyfriend's Italian family. This annual event is a tradition among many families of Italian heritage and was affectionately coined as 'National Wog Day' in Looking for Alibrandi. The setting for  the day's tomato based activities were in Nonno's beautiful backyard.  

Nonno's old school garden

Cellar Door Wine Festival - Your chance to win tickets!

Hello fellow Choppers!

We are running a competition for this year's Cellar Door Wine Festival - http://www.cellardoorwinefestivaladelaide.com.au/. The festival is on Friday 22 to Sunday 24 February 2013 at the Adelaide Convention Centre.

For your chance to win 2 tickets to this great event, reply to this post in the comments section (and send a copy of your entry to adelaide.choppingboard@gmail.com) answering the following question;

In 25 words or less, tell us which SA food and wine combination you would introduce a visitor to. You can only let them know about one!

You have one week to submit your answer (competition closes 20th Feb). We will then get together and decide who had the best answer! We will then announce the winner on this post and you will be contacted through your comment. So check back in a weeks time to see who the winner is!

Grind It - Brunch Beachside

After a very windy jetty to jetty beach run this Australia Day public holiday, something delicious for the belly was the only thing on my mind. Grind It at Glenelg has been on the To-Try list for over a year after hearing very favourable things about both their food and coffee. Finally made it! On arrival the place was packed, with a couple of groups waiting. Expecting the wait to be quite long, it was a pleasant surprise to be shown to a booth a short 15 minutes after arrival.   

Grind It - Pretty self explanatory

Imperial Peking - does Yum Cha

Imperial Peking has been known for its great Peking style food for many years.  Our previous review here showcased Imperial Peking's lunch time cuisine.  Starting from 1/1/2013, they decided that they would also expand their lunch menu to include Cantonese Yum Cha.

This was exciting news for my family and I, as our weekend lunch meet-ups would normally include Imperial Peking or Yum Cha at another restaurant.  By combining two types of cuisine into one location would mean our stomachs could be satisfied much quicker without having to wait for another week.

The following review is actually based on 3 different visits.  The reason?  We knew it was probably too good to be true to have 2 different types of cuisine in the one restaurant.  Our first visit was on opening day.  The restaurant was to full capacity, and the dishes below were what we ordered.

Prawn dumplings

Quick chop - The Lion Burger - classic pub style

The Lion Hotel in North Adelaide is an Adelaide institution, for both a good night out and for fantastic food. The Lion has two distinct areas for food, half being the formal restaurant serving modern australian food, and the other half being pub style, with your classics and some other specials. This review is on the the classic Lion burger, eaten in the pub part of The Lion Hotel. I've had a few of these burgers and they haven't changed much at all over the years.

The Lion Burger

Quick Chop - Public CBD - Wagyu Burger

Public CBD is one of the new comers to the Adelaide CBD business cafe scene. It's a unique concept, trying to combine the feel of a few local favourites, a modern lunch like Press* or The Gallery, a formal meal like Georges, and also a more casual feel like Blefari. I've had a few meals here, breakfast and lunch. I will review breakfast another day, as today's quick chop is about the burger!

Wagyu Burger

Fancy Burger - Not so fancy?

For anyone who hasn't realised, The Chopping Board is made up of multiple members. When we all get together, forming a review can get quite difficult. This review, is written by The Emperor, given that most other burger reviews are written by him, and combines the thoughts of the others throughout. We hope you enjoy all the perspectives on this review. 

The first time I visited Fancy Burger was over three years ago, at Blackwood, and I liked it then.  It was a fresh suburban burger bar, doing great patties with great sauce. Since then, I have visited a few more times, and still enjoyed it, but have observed a slight decline in the quality of the product as it's popularity grew.  When I found out that they were opening in the CBD of Adelaide, I was a little excited, the CBD lacks some good burger bars, and it's hard to get to the trucks all the time.

Fancy signage