Adelaide Eats

Adelaide is the froo-froo capital of Australia, which made it the perfect place to scrub off the red dirt and try to re-acclimate to civilization after our two weeks in Bruce and the Outback.

There is lots of money in Adelaide, and the city isn't shy to show it by spending plenty of "fun tickets" on food, wine, and fun.  We welcomed ourselves back to society with some very delicious, and very expensive pizza (so they call it, but we say that although it is wonderful to eat and does resemble pizza in many ways, it isn't pizza).  The restaurant was called Good Life, and the name didn't lie.  Organic ingredients and atmosphere to spare made our fancy dinner in Adelaide memorable.  Our pizza might have been tiny and quite pricey (everything Andrew Hedden stands against in a pizza), but it made for a near-perfect "welcome back" dinner.  We returned to our splurgey hotel room satisfied and very much looking forward to a real mattress to sleep on.

We hit the Central Market first thing the next morning.  Adelaide's very old and very famous market is a special place.  It is a food fan's fantasy, where wondrous smells and sights greet you from every angle.  Meats, cheeses, olives, yogurts, baked goods, and everything in-between argued for our attention. We ignored everything else and sat down with coffees, pastries, and a newspaper in a (successful) attempt to begin the process of re-culturing ourselves.  Next, we bought chocolates, salami, cheese, bread, olives, and a few other goodies to get us through until dinner.  Many of those items made another appearance around lunch time when we spread them out in picnic form as we watched pelicans float down the river that runs through town.

We checked out a few really terrific and really free museums as we strolled around Adelaide.  Jeff particularly enjoyed a few of the contemporary Aboriginal art pieces (like the one below).  But food remained our main topic of conversation.

We spent two solid hours at the National Wine Center.  As snooty as it sounds, this Oz wine mecca was pretty informative and far more interesting and fun than we thought it would be.  We learned about the different wine producing regions in Australia, about the many different grape varietals, and about the history of wine in the world and in Oz.   We tasted a bit of wine at the end of our wine center experience, which prepared our palates for the mighty wine Kangaroo Island and the Adelaide Hills had to offer not so far down the road.
 
Our Adelaide food bonanza was a great beginning to a road trip that would turn out to be pretty food-centric.  Small-town bakeries, wineries, and honey farms would fill our next two weeks - as well as our tummies!  We had to make like Pac Man and eat our way through such famous food and wine areas.  We had no choice, really.  After all, you never know when you will find yourself stuck in the middle of nowhere with a package of tortillas, dwindling peanut butter and jelly rations, and a big orange van named Bruce.  It's like they say, "You have to grab civilization by the vanilla slice when you have the chance!"