Drinking and Not Eating in Adelaide: The Crisis of the Outshone City
I’m a hospitality guy. I am in love with my job and my industry. Being able to have fun while I work and share my passion for great booze with strangers is what I live for. Working at Biggies at Bertram has been the great experience of my life so far. I’ve met new and interesting people, some who I now call some of my dearest friends, all from working behind the bar. And after spending this past year travelling the country, enjoying amazing food and booze, partying with fresh faces, I can’t help but notice this gaping hole in Adelaide’s dining/nightlife culture.
First off the bat: this is not a skewering of Adelaide; I adore this town. Is there fantastic places to go eat and drink? Absolutely, some of the finest bars and restaurants in the country are on our doorstep (and of course it doesn’t hurt that if you call yourself an “Adelaidian”, you’re about 20 minutes from some of the best wine and produce in the world). Hains & Co., Pink Moon Saloon, The Wheatsheaf and NOLA are some of the great watering holes in Australia. Without a doubt eating at Africola on my father’s birthday was the best dining experience i’ve had in recent memory. There are plenty of great little pubs around town to sit back and sink pint after pint of Coopers Pale. Billy Bob’s BBQ jam at The Grace Emily is the best thing you can do on a Monday night, one of the best things you can do all week even. Wednesday night beers at the beloved Crown & Anchor (long live the Cranka) is a time honoured tradition. I’ve had too many (a.k.a not enough) knock-offs turned club nights at The Exeter Hotel. And my own haunt Biggies is the best place in town you can have a pretentious free boogie whilst enjoying some of South Australia’s best beer and wine. There is certainly no lack in the quality of our bar and restaurant scene. Quantity is another thing entirely.
It’s amazing in Melbourne and Sydney how easy it is to find a phenomenal place to drink or eat without even trying. You can walk down a street in St. Kilda on a Monday night and drink have cocktails until 1am, on a public holiday even! After a recent trip to Melbourne with some friends, walking down Chapel St. on the New Years Day public holiday, we were able to enjoy some amazing craft beer at The Local Taphouse, and then stumbled on Holy Grail, a fantastic little cocktail haunt, and were able to drink until it struck 1am and had to close up shop (shout outs to the bartender who let us close up with him and hang around to 3:30am though). In Adelaide, the streets would be completely empty, and for us hospo folk, the venues that stay open (pokies rooms and casino’s excluded) are look upon like Gods. Even food! Whilst at Holy Grail, we asked where we could get some food at that hour, and the barman just pointed out the door to a great pizza spot. The same thing happened 2 nights later at The Rook’s Return, great pizza just across the road (okay, we like pizza when we’re drinking, sue us). In Adelaide, it’s a scavenger hunt to find great pizza. You know your nearest pizza spot sucks. We’ve got very few and far between great local watering holes if you live outside the CBD, only pubs and pokies rooms with all your favourite lagers on tap. Again, nothing wrong with a pub and a pokies room, i’ll sit and drink beers in a pokies room bar till the day I die, but you can’t deny Melbourne has got us beat in the outer suburbs. Not a TKO, a full first round knock-out loss. As far as our restaurants go, Sydney wipes the floor with us just the same. To every really great restaurant in Adelaide, there is probably 10 of the same caliber in Sydney. From the upper echelon of places like Quay and Sepia, to the fringe, casual but experimental joints like ACME and 10 William St, there is just an enormous bag of brilliant places to go eat. You look at the most recent Top 100 Australian Restaurants list, it is littered with Victorian and New South Wales restaurants, South Australia’s first placing is at 47 (Africola) with only 5 in total (Orana 48, Peel St. 95, Hentley Farm 96, and Fino 98 rounding us off). And it’s not like Adelaide’s population is too small, it’s about 1.2 million at the moment, and I can’t stress this enough, our produce is incredible! It’s all in our basket, but more often than not, we don’t take the opportunity.
What I really think it stems down to, is that for the most part, the general population are extremely unwilling to go out and spend their money on a great meal, they’d rather stash their pennies and travel. And again, there is nothing wrong with that at all, it’s a fantastic thing to do with your hard earned cash, I do the same thing myself. But when we go and travel, we go out and we eat fantastic food, we drink amazing beer, wine and spirits, and we come home and tell everybody how amazing the food is in such and such is, we document it all on Instagram, and we miss out on the brilliant things going on just around the corner. In contrast, in Melbourne I like to ask the local single 20-somethings how often they go out for a drink or some food. The general response is about 3-4 times a week. For us Adelaide folk, it’s generally once, twice on a good week, only on weekends. There is very little of a midweek night out if you work the traditional 9-5 hours, the city generally teems with hospo folk. Maybe the binge drinking culture is a bit more prevalent in Adelaide. There has always been the culture of rocking up to a venue and asking “what’s the cheapest drink?” so you can smash back as many as you can. There’s a time and a place for that, and for us Adelaide heads, that means Saturday, when we don’t have to go to work the next day. Having a few glasses of wine with an amazing meal is an underrated experience in this town. Adelaidians are very unwilling to part with their cash if they’re not drunk by the end of it.
What I think contributes to this is the lack of understanding of why it costs to go out, and an under appreciation of hospitality workers. When you ask why it costs $20 for your breakfast and a coffee, you’re forgetting about the cook who made it, and the barista who enables your caffeine addiction. The food and drink in front of you is the cheapest part of the transaction, everything else costs far more than some smashed avocado and eggs on toast, you’re paying for someone to make it for you, and better. What i’ve noticed more in Melbourne and Sydney, is a higher amount of respect and admiration for a hospitality professional. There is an understanding that they are good at what they do and make a mighty fine cocktail. They know they put up with a lot of slack. They know without them, they would have a far less vibrant and fun city. They know they are the people that make their lives better. Of course there are people in Adelaide that understand this plight, but the next time you complain it being $9 for a pint of beer, you can go to the bottle shop down the road, buy a carton cheaper, go home, hang out with the same group of friends you’ve known since high school, get pissed, make yourself steak and veg for dinner and complain about being bored, then you might understand what you’re paying for.
I’m now at the age where a large portion of my friends are now moving to Melbourne, and i’d be lying if i haven’t had the same fantasy. Every time I visit I say I will move. But then I get back home and I see the potential of this city, and all I want to do is be a part of the collective of people who could make this city into a new tourist destination. But every year, I see more and more cool and interesting people with fresh ideas and a brilliant work ethic move to Melbourne. There’s far more opportunities available and there is more money for them, it’s a no brainer. This town has this old white liberal air about it. The State government will quickly spend tax payer money on infrastructure preparing for population development, rather than create ways to increase tourism and coerce people to make the move to South Australia. And look, i get that, infrastructure is an important aspect of how cities progress and makes day to day living more comfortable and easy (side note: Melbourne is again far superior in this aspect. But we’ve got Sydney covered no worries). But comfortable and easy is not on the radar of an under 30 year old, career opportunities and things to do are their priorities, and that demographic, the young people with bright minds are how Adelaide as a city is going to move forward, rather than making the people who are moving towards retirement more comfortable. It’s why people make fun of this city, using phrases like “Great place to raise your kids” and follow it up with “I went to Adelaide once. It was closed”. But then I look at Duncan Welgemoed. He’s a chef from South Africa who has worked at The Fat Duck under Heston Blumenthal and at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay. But he’s made Adelaide his home, winning Chef of the Year at Bistro Dom in 2013, and opening the oft mentioned in this piece Africola. He’s been one of these people who has made this town more vibrant and exciting, but he also moved here with his wife to start a family. But he opened an amazing restaurant, using the phenomenal produce that is around us, and has been reaping the rewards ever since. Unfortunately the youth of this town aren’t doing the same kind of thing.
In saying all this, I have to concede that we are getting better. I remember the days when Peel Street was a dank alleyway of our infamous nightclub strip Hindley Street. Now it is occupied by brilliant bars like Clever Little Tailor and Maybe Mae, and fantastic restaurants like Gondola Gondola and Peel St. It’s teeming with the kind of people that need to stick around. And I can’t stress this point enough: Mad March in Adelaide, with the Fringe and the Adelaide Festival going on, during that time of year, Adelaide is the greatest city in this country hands down. But around the country, there are cities that can keep that kind of vibrance pumping all year round. Being a part of Biggies of Bertram, I feel like one of those people who have added something to the city, and I think there are better days for Adelaide yet. There is a wealth of under utilised opportunities. But i’m holding on to the hope that this will happen before all my friends and people I admire ex-communicate to Melbourne.
So for those of you playing at home in Adelaide: go out and eat, it’s only money. Drink less and drink better. Respect your hospitality workers, it’s not advisable to piss off the people making your coffee/food/drink. Make this city as fun as it could be. Give back and send forth positivity.
But at least we can get a beer at 2am. Sorry Sydney.
