Featuring: Fire by Soi 38, Glen Ewin Estate, Magill Estate Kitchen…

WHEN owner-chef Terry Intarakhamhaeng opened his Pulteney Street restaurant Soi 38 in 2014 his plan was to serve street food snacks and dishes that couldn’t be found on the usual Adelaide Thai restaurant menus. It was a pretty down to earth place, not unlike what you might have found in Bangkok’s famous Soi 38 dining strip, which was shut down some years ago.
Soi 38’s cooking evolved, leading to a move to larger, more stylish premises and a more sophisticated menu. And in a back to the future move, much to the delight of its initial customers, the original restaurant was renamed Fire by Soi 38, still under the control of chef Terry but once again focussing on the simpler street food style of cooking that built its reputation.
Fire’s interior has been stripped back to a point where it again seems fairly basic but filled with light through large windows in its corner location and a bit of fun with matchbox-style lightboxes inspired by street signage in Thailand. No frills, no bells, no whistles, just a focus on delivering approachable street food, though this time with a few rather non-traditional touches.
There’s still the ever-popular beef cheek massaman curry, but this time served with crisp fries, as is the flame-grilled beef brisket infused with lemongrass and fish sauce. A new highlight dish is a spicy Chiang Mai-inspired chicken hotdog with pickled slaw – a riff on the spiced sausages popular in Northern Thailand. Dumplings in green curry sauce, sticky wings with sriracha mayonnaise and popcorn cauliflower all add to an attractive menu.
Fire, 54 Pulteney Street, Adelaide. Open for lunch and dinner Monday to Saturday. Phone (08) 8310 0393.
For many people who’ve heard of Glen Ewin Estate their immediate impressions would be of wedding receptions and figs from its 12,000-tree orchard, and until a few years ago that would have been pretty much correct. But no longer.
Glen Ewin is still, of course, one of South Australia’s most popular wedding destinations and is well set up with extraordinary surroundings of manicured landscaping, and vast and mysterious looking old buildings from its former life as a jam factory – some of them repurposed for private and commercial wine storage.
It now also has a modern cellar door and function area called The Gatehouse, plus a purpose-built reception venue built around the 100-year-old former pulp shed. Following the hiatus imposed by the pandemic, there’s a renewed emphasis on the cellar door restaurant, with a highly experienced and talented Malaysian-born executive chef Jason Theng now in charge of the stoves.

Theng’s Asian influence, along with Glen Ewin’s focus on figs and related products – including a highly seductive fig gin – has helped create some original and very tasty dishes such as Glen Ewin duck and gin sausages with Filipino afritada and fig and chilli chutney.
A cold plate of Filipino pork rillettes with homemade pickles, fig chutney and sourdough is a great way to start, or perhaps the salmon sashimi with soy and ginger dressing and fig oil. Main courses, along with the sausages, include crisp-skinned pork belly with fig and vinegar sauce – and for something fig-free, gorgeous looking dumplings filled with wood ear mushroom, or pan-fried barramundi in a Malaysian-style curry.
Once having one of South Australia’s earliest vineyards, Glen Ewin no longer has its own vines – ripped out 150 years ago by owner George McEwin after finding one of his workers drunk – but they have several wines made for them, including excellent chardonnay and shiraz, and also there’s the fig gin. Glen Ewin Estate, 43 Lower Hermitage Road, Lower Hermitage. Open for lunch Thursday to Sunday. Phone (08) 8380 5657 (online bookings only).
It might seem unusual to see people quaffing Grange over brunch, but that’s possible in one of the few places to serve Grange by the glass – albeit at $195. But then everything from the house-made baked beans with pork parmigiana, scrambled eggs and blood sausage at brunch, to the whole fried barramundi with tamarind sauce and papaya peanut salad at lunch is rather special at Magill Estate Kitchen, sister restaurant to the top-rated Magill Estate restaurant next door.
That’s except for the prices, which are as affordable as most suburban bruncheries, despite being under the control and now ownership of executive chef Greg Huggins who, after nine years heading the Magill Estate kitchen, has taken over the lease and management of both main restaurant and sibling kitchen.
The kitchen is a long, ultra-contemporary space with wall-to-wall windows overlooking the heritage shiraz vineyard, with a small lounge area, a private dining section and multiple seating choices from individual tables to a communal benchtop, with the opportunity to sit outdoors on fine days to better enjoy the panoramic views.
Magill Estate Kitchen, 78 Penfold Road, Magill. Open for brunch and lunch Wednesday to Sunday. Phone (08) 8301 5943.