Featuring: Mallozzi, The Den, Henry’s Table…

HE’S one of Australia’s most celebrated chefs and a pioneer of Australian indigenous cuisine, with his landmark Adelaide restaurant Orana last year named as Australia’s best restaurant.
But Jock Zonfrillo is also half Scottish and half Italian, and those Italian roots are hard to shake off. So when an opportunity arose to open a bar almost next door to Orana and its sibling restaurant downstairs, Blackwood, there was no mistaking its ethic identity with vivid red, green and white walls and a lengthy spuntino menu as deliciously Italian as chef Stefano Magrofuoco’s accent.
Mallozzi is on two levels – you can sit at a window street with the kitchen behind you or at an outside table to enjoy the passing parade, or head downstairs to a very stylish, and very Italian looking, bar area.
Plates are small but so are the prices, almost everything is under $10, and it’s an invitation to graze – starting with plates of salumi or formaggi, including perfect rounds of house-made buffalo ricotta topped with baby basil leaves and olive oil. There’s vitello tonnato, a tangle of pink veal with tuna mayonnaise, toasted tigelle generously filled with mortadella and cream cheese, and small bowls of pasta such as very simple, very delicious tonnarelli with pecorino and black pepper.
Drinks are all very Italian – and though it may not be on the menu, ask if there’s fresh cannoli. Filled with more of that buffalo mozzarella, they’re perfect. Mallozi, 279 Rundle St, Adelaide. Open Thursday from 5pm, Friday to Sunday from noon.
Bethany Finn has been a chef to follow ever since she worked at the Adelaide Hilton, then her own restaurant Urban, and now as executive chef at the upmarket Mayflower restaurant in the Mayfair Hotel, where she focuses on classic European cooking.
Now she’s added a more casual – though still very smart – bistro-style diner next to the downstairs Mayflower restaurant. Called The Den, it picks up the glamorous Art Deco styling of the surrounding hotel.
This is where classic European meets pub favourites, with a menu that hits the sweet spot from smart casual dining to discreet business lunches.
It’s unlikely anyone has ever written an ode to the steak sandwich, but if they did they’d have to check out the one offered here, a marvel of sliced steak with onion rings and cheese in a plaited brioche bun, with shoestring fries and a peppercorn sauce boat on the side.

Lighter dishes include king prawns grilled in their shell with fennel, or waygu bresola curled up in radicchio leaves, while more substantial dishes include confit duck leg with peas and crisp speck in a Dijon mustard sauce – and of course that steak sandwich. Some people might come here just for the patisserie, which is really very good. The Den, Mayfair Hotel, 45 King William St, Adelaide. Open for lunch and dinner daily; phone (08) 8210 8888.
When Ayers House first opened back in 1973, its restaurant was the height of fancy dining and among the first silver service restaurants in South Australia.
Owner Richard McLeod purchased the venue in 1991 with partners, and while they kept the restaurant side of things running for a while, they eventually closed it and for the past two decades Ayers House has been used solely for functions and weddings.
Now, after a very comprehensive and elegant fit-out and a relaunch as Henry’s Table, the once glamorous a la carte menu has been revived in less formal but beautifully designed surroundings, and with considerably less glamour, reflecting more contemporary, value-conscious tastes.
The menu is a contemporary mix of South-East Asian and Middle Eastern food, drawing on a kitchen populated by staff from China, Thailand, Pakistan, India, France and Italy, all working under Irish-born chef Paul Groves.
This accounts for its “no rules” menu with spicy, full-flavoured dishes covering a wide geographical range. There’s smoked chicken gyoza alongside slow-cooked pork belly in a sweet, sticky soy/anise broth with a crisply fried cake of rice noodles, or Korean-style spatchcock with kimchi pancake next to Coorong mulloway with Thai-style green mango and lychee salad.
It’s less confusing than it sounds because the dishes themselves are coherent and well prepared – and it does mean there’s something for all tastes, including a signature Balinese dish, bebek betutu, a whole spiced duck marinated overnight and cooked for four hours in a banana leaf. It will feed four as an entree or two as a main, and needs to be ordered 24 hours in advance. Henry’s Table, Ayers House, 288 North Tce, Adelaide. Open for dinner Wednesday to Saturday; phone (08) 8224 0666.