Featuring: Fino Vino, Mayflower, Little Wolf…

ONE of the most anticipated Adelaide restaurants of 2019, it scraped in just a few days before Christmas, is Fino Vino the latest venture by co-owners chef David Swain and front of house maven Sharon Romeo.
While they retain ownership of celebrated regional restaurant Fino Seppeltsfield in the Barossa Valley as reported last issue, Fino Vino follows more as an extension of the vision they had at their original Fino at Willunga, which they opened in 2006 and ran for eight years before the move to Seppeltsfield.
With head chef Joe Carey, formerly at l’Italy after a previously lengthy stint at top Victorian restaurant Brae, in charge of the kitchen, Fino Vino is very much a celebration of all things local. That starts with the design by Adelaide design firm Studio-Gram who has packed banquette seating, booths and a long communal table into a long space that ends with a very open kitchen, almost like a brightly-lit culinary stage, with kitchen bar seating providing front row views of the kitchen team at work.
Chef Carey is obviously totally in tune with Swain’s credo of taking the best, freshest and most seasonal produce available, doing as little as possible to it and letting natural flavours and textures do the work. Swain is noted for working with small producers, with an open kitchen back door through which locally-grown produce can, and does, flow.
The menu is as minimal as most of the dishes, just listings of core ingredients, such as “mulloway, green tomato”, which brings shavings of raw mulloway cured in kelp, in a puddle of lemon verbena flavoured oil with burnt tomato juice. “Capsicum, onion, garlic”, brings a tangle of rich red grilled capsicum with charred onion juice and garlic slivers.
These are typical of the smaller dishes that dominate the menu, all designed for sharing, such as the chargrilled sourdough flatbread topped with oyster cream, peas, zucchini flower and sea blight, as colourful as it is delicious. As visually striking as it is minimal is the whole baby octopus, skewered and chargrilled with a chocolate and miso glaze.
It’s a style of cooking that brings out the best natural flavours, intensifies them and presents them without superfluous decoration. There is also a handful of larger dishes, including a pork belly chop from Barossa grower Michael Wohlstadt, served with cabbage and desert lime.
Sharon Romeo is the mistress of the small wine list, but here she has some 100 labels, mostly small and interesting producers, with a special nod to sherry – which goes marvellously well with most of the dishes. Open for lunch Tuesday-Friday, dinner Monday-Saturday, Fino Vino, 82 Flinders Street, Adelaide, phone (08) 8232 7919.
It’s perhaps a sign of the times, where all things minimalist and modern reign, that a restaurant such as the Mayfair Hotel’s Mayflower restaurant is not as celebrated as it surely deserves to be.
Executive chef Bethany Finn is probably the only chef in Adelaide who might be found reading Escoffier at bedtime, but her interpretation of that style of classic French cooking is impeccable, and served with all the panache and ceremony it deserves by a highly skilled wait staff – sometimes involving the use of gorgeous antique gueridons, elaborate antique serving trolleys that Finn managed to salvage from another hotel that regarded them as redundant. They’ll bring the 600g chateaubriand for two or the sumptuous spread of desserts direct to your table.

This sort of cooking, so labour intensive, can’t be cheap but at Mayflower it’s not outrageous and, all things considered, is extraordinarily good value for money. This is seen immediately if you choose a plate of freshly made canapés to start the meal, intricate morsels such as truffle gougeres with a creamy cheese filling, steak tartare sandwiched between crisp potato wafers, or a tiny pastry cornet filled with smoked salmon.
Entrée dishes include a classic Caesar salad, even an old-style prawn cocktail, while a tart tartin is given a more contemporary interpretation with slow roasted heritage tomatoes, goat’s curd and olive tapenade. There are no gimmicks or culinary tricks here just old-fashioned skills and quality given a very modern airing.
You’d probably want to be in celebratory mood to splash out on the iced seafood platter for two (a magnificent sight that might include seared tuna loin and lobster tail), or the chateaubriand, which is also designed for two diners. This is presented, as already mentioned, on the gueridon, sliced at the table and served with a selection of vegetables and a selection of sauces, including a perfectly made béarnaise and rich, earthy mushroom forestiere sauce.
By now you may just want to look at the dessert trolley rather than partake, but it’s definitely worth close inspection as a work of culinary art. Napkins rolled inside old-fashioned napkin rings, lots of crisp white napery, an experienced sommelier in charge of a very good wine list – this is a place that respects its customers and deserves respect in return. Open for breakfast daily and lunch Saturday, with dinner Tuesday-Saturday. Mayflower Restaurant, 45 King William St, Adelaide; phone (08) 8210 8899.
McLaren Vale’s Mitolo winery opened its Bocca di Lupo (“mouth of the wolf”) restaurant around two years ago as a very sophisticated and elegant addition to the region’s already impressive array of restaurants. Now it’s been reinvented as Little Wolf, with a change in direction to more traditional Italian dishes.
New head chef Vincenzo La Montagna, who impressed when he owned fine dining restaurant Vincenzo’s Cucina Vera in Adelaide several years ago, has brought a wealth of Italian tradition to the table, which is a perfect match for Mitolo’s wines.
Built around several jet-black former shipping containers, this is a superbly styled $3.5m restaurant now adorned with bold script that spells the words “Endless Journey” and artwork from Mexican artist Ricardo Gonzalez.
There’s a terrific range of small dishes to start with, including salumi and formaggi dishes such as wagu bresaola, sheep’s milk ricotta and caciocavallo, fried gnocchi, arrosticini lamb or chicken skewers, and pizza mortazza made with wood-fired Roman pita and mortadella. Hero dishes include bistecca Fiorentina and lamb tomahawk steaks cooked on an Argentinian-style assado grill. Little Wolf, 141 McMurtrie Rd, McLaren Vale. Open for lunch Friday to Monday, dinner Saturday; phone (08) 8323 9304.