Eating Australian: Orana, Adelaide
You’ve probably eaten kangaroo and wallaby and maybe even salt bush. You’ve probably heard of bunya nuts and lemon myrtle and quandong, even if you haven’t had a chance to taste them quite yet. But what about dorrigo or sunrise limes or brush cherries? It’s incredible how much of the Australian population is only just learning about native Australian ingredients – me included. And how much there is yet to learn. Australian modern cuisine is generally considered in terms of a mish mash of lots of other cusines – English traditional, Italian, meat and three veg and maybe some Asian fusion along the way. You just don’t say “I’m having Australian tonight” in the same way you do for Italian or Japanese or Indian. The oldest living culture in the world has much to teach us about Australian cuisine, even if we are only just beginning to ask.
Jock Zonfrillo, a Scottish-born chef, has done more than most to bring some knowledge to Australians about their own native ingredients. Zonfrillo’s restaurant, Orana, opened in Adelaide in 2013 and has gone from strength to strength, named as the 2018 Gourmet Traveller Restaurant of the Year and achieving two hats in the 2018 Good Food Guide (the 2019 version will be released next week).
But, it’s not just about the restaurant. In fact, according to an interview with Good Food, the restaurant was started as a vehicle to get funding for the Orana Foundation. The foundation, in conjunction with the University of Adelaide, is building a native-food database, running flavor trials and assessing the viability of commercial production. It aims to bring recognition to traditional food cultures and ensure that Indigenous communities are benefiting from any future commercial enterprises. In an interview with Gourmet Traveller when Orana won the Best Restaurant gong, Zonfrillo said, “The restaurant is just a billboard that promotes this food. Developing the foundation is the crucial next step in capturing and preserving Indigenous food knowledge and to sharing that with everyone. I aim to give back more than I take.” The world is listening, with Zonfrillo winning the Basque Culinary World Prize 2018 — a prestigious award for chefs improving society through gastronomy.
Eating Australian
When Cat suggested we eat at Orana on one of her final weekends in Adelaide, I was so excited! I had been wanting to eat Zonfrillo’s food for a long time. A great advantage of one of the best restaurants in the country being in Adelaide is that we were able to get a booking on a Friday night only a week in advance!
After making our way up the industrial staircase on the side of the building to the first floor, we were greeted warmly for our 6pm seating. On the undressed, timber table, sat a glass cloche protecting dough proving, ready to be taken away, baked and served to us later. It was clear this was going to be more than just a meal – over the next two and a half hours, we were treated to 17 courses, each with a story and a sense of discovery.
The first course of potato damper threaded onto lemon myrtle skewers, cooking over hot coals with a side of roast lamb butter was put in front of us, alongside a cup of macadamia soup with native thyme oil. Our waiter, squatting down next to the table so she was eye level with us, implored us to relax and get our camping vibe on. The fun of this dish was a great indicator that whilst the food that night was going to be seriously good, Orana didn’t want us to take ourselves too seriously.
The ‘snacks’ then commenced, with a constant stream of different dishes making their way out of the partially open kitchen, served either by a chef or the very well informed wait staff. Our standout was the Spencer Gulf prawn roti – flaky, crisp roti with native greens and a plump prawn with a sauce that was pure comfort food. The kangaroo tail pies were also delicious, with a rich meat sauce encased in crumbly pastry.
The crockery was gorgeous, a mixture of custom pieces designed especially for Orana and other pieces they have picked up along the way. Cutlery wasn’t really required for most of the snacks – it was all food you could pick up and eat in your hands.
We were told the ‘Soup Soup’, a broth of Marron with Australian botanicals left to steep on the table, is so named because a particularly good soup is dubbed ‘Soup Soup’ by indigenous communities Zonfrillo has been visiting as part of his research. Cat dubbed this one ‘Soup Soup Soup’ and she was quite right – it was complex and full of flavor.
Three main courses followed the 11 snack courses, with the Marron, green ants & Geraldton Wax being the most striking of the three. The vibrant green sauce, with little ants floating around in it, was visually arresting. We were heartily encouraged to take hold of the Marron tail, use it to mop up the green sauce and to make sure we got lots of crunchy ants with each bite! We complied and it was delicious! Tender, kangaroo slivers served hugging a bed of smoked potato and resting in a feral plum and wattleseed sauce was a rich and fitting end to the main courses, with the smoked mash tying back into the potato damper that we started with.
The signature dessert of buffalo milk in a pool of wild strawberry juice and eucalyptus oil has been on the menu since day one. It was one of the dishes Cat and I kept returning to as we talked about the meal again and again over the weekend. The texture of the set buffalo milk was so silky and the eucalyptus cutting through the strawberry ensured there was no overwhelming sweetness to the dish at all.
Over 17 dishes, every single one had an ingredient I had never tried before. Many I had never heard of. It’s no small thing that Orana has been as successful as it has with a menu that will challenge many diners, even those of us who think we know a little bit about food. But the kind and never, ever pretentious or condescending service made the experience really comfortable. It was such a lovely mix of information, fun and care. We asked lots of questions and hung on every word of the dish introductions, revelling in the learning experience as well as the fact we were eating really delicious food.
Orana is a special occasion restaurant for most, with a dinner Tasting menu coming in at $240 per person and wine matching for an additional $170. That said, it holds up exceptionally well against some of the 3 Michelin star restaurants I have visited over the last year. Two people could eat as well, if not better, at Orana for the same price as one person at any of the San Francisco restaurants I visited in May.
When weighing up the ‘is it worth it’ question, I think it is worth considering how the restaurant interacts with the work of the Orana Foundation. The interest the dining experience sparked in me to learn more about indigenous ingredients has led me to reading a number of articles and blogs I might never have stumbled across otherwise. The aim of the foundation to build knowledge and awareness and create an industry around these ingredients that supports Aboriginal communities is an important one. Increasing exposure and interest in these ingredients and advancing the aims of the Orana Foundation is a wonderful reason to visit the vehicle that was launched to support it.
