Adelaide’s Best New Restaurants of 2025 (So Far) | Broadsheet
MID-YEAR WRAP
Italian, Japanese, Turkish – the best new venues in Adelaide are from people sharing a taste of home.
MID-YEAR WRAP
Italian, Japanese, Turkish – the best new venues in Adelaide are from people sharing a taste of home.
It feels like we say it every year, but Adelaide’s love affair with all things Italian has not let up. A significant proportion of Adelaide’s population is of Italian descent , which has shaped the city’s food scene for decades. So this year, like many years before it, most of the best new restaurants that have opened are serving Italian cuisine.
The remaining new openings come from – surprisingly enough – people with no professional background in cooking. Buta Yama Ramen was opened by a former electrical engineer and Mini Lokanta is helmed by a couple who work office jobs during the week but run a restaurant from their home on Saturdays.
Here in – alphabetical order – are the best new restaurants openings of 2025 so far.
Buta Yama Ramen, CBD. Photo: Giuseppe Silvestro
Buta Yama Ramen, CBD
In Japanese, “buta” means pork and “yama” means mountain – put them together, as in Buta Yama , and you get “a mountain of pork”. For a ramen restaurant that uses over 50 kilograms of pork leg and back bones daily, the name couldn’t be more apt. The venue was opened by Jameson Chiang, who worked as an electrical engineer for two years before acquiring Mugen House, along with a few sushi takeaways across the city. Chiang developed the menu in consultation with Hoshino-san, a respected ramen chef who owns a restaurant in Musashino Ramen Complex in Tokyo.
The standout dish is the shio tonkotsu ramen, which has a rich, creamy pork bone broth and slices of tender pork. Other menu highlights include a black garlic oil tonkotsu ramen; Jiro-style ramen; miso pork back fat ramen (a soup rarely seen in Adelaide or even Melbourne, according to Chiang); and a spicy miso ramen.
Mensa, Kent Town. Photo: Giuseppe Silvestro
Mensa, Kent Town
Mensa – which opened in 2024 but missed the cut-off for our end of year lists – stands apart from the avalanche of new Italian restaurant openings last year. The Kent Town eatery comes from Eugenio Maiale, who co-founded Auge and Citrus in the early 2000s, and Claudio Ferraro, one of the founders of Cibo Ristorante and its subsequent franchises, plus Valentino’s. (The two also own Italia Pasta Fresca alongside Messina’s Nick Palumbo.) They’ve teamed up with third partner Zoran Pavlovic, who first met Maiale when he was working as a dishie at Citrus. Since then, he’s clocked time at institutions like Chianti, Press and Osteria Oggi. In short, there’s some serious Adelaide dining DNA running through this place.
The open kitchen is turning out traditional and fancified Italian dishes, including a selection of house-extruded pastas. There’s a classic rabbit ragu with thick ribbons of pappardelle; a knockout orecchiette with chicken livers, marsala and crisp-fried guanciale; and pumpkin-filled pasta triangles with butter and sage. Alternatively, you can snack on pasta fritta with honey, ’nduja and mascarpone or Abruzzese-style crumbed and fried olives stuffed with pork mince. Or go large with proteins including pork Milanese, served on the bone with a buttery sauce, fried sage and crispy capers. The dessert menu has won fans for its cannoli and boozy mascarpone rum baba.
Mini Lokanta, North Adelaide. Photo: Harry Winnall
Mini Lokanta, North Adelaide
It might seem hard to believe that one of the best new restaurant openings of the year comes from two untrained chefs, who both have day jobs and only work in hospitality one day each week, but it does. Ten-seater Turkish restaurant Mini Lokanta opened in February. It feels like an intimate dinner in someone’s home – which it is. Enver Tuğrul Özbecene and Gökçe Özbecene, who moved to Australia from Turkey four years ago, set up the restaurant in the front room of their heritage-listed home. Their goal was to share the flavours and customs of their homeland. The eight-course menu is a love letter to the slow dining approach of meyhanes (Turkish taverns). They only open on Saturday nights and, after a Broadsheet article , have been fully booked until October.
The hype is well-earned. The meal starts with cold appetisers like girit ezmesi, a mix of aged feta, fresh herbs and pistachios. Other dishes include manti, sarma and Turkish bread. There’s the option to BYO for no-corkage but there’s also a small drinks menu including raki, salgam, wine and beers.
Pinco Italo, CBD. Photo: Courtesy of Pinco Italo
Pinco Italo, CBD
The Pinco Deli brand has grown up with Pinco Italo , a swish CBD spot with white tablecloths, cocktails and a menu of Italian classics. The team opened Pinco Italo in April in the former Jumbo space. It’s the sort of spot where you could have a work lunch during the day, a tipple at aperitivo hour or drink and dine late into the night. Lighter plates include rockmelon wedged between slices of buffalo mozzarella, but there’s also classics like house-made pasta, including pappardelle with a white pork and beef ragu or a gnocchi cacio e pepe with thinly sliced prosciutto cotto. The lunchtime sandwich menu includes all the Pinco Deli regulars, as well as newer items like fried chicken alla vodka and a spanakopita melt. The warm interior, which contrasts with its brutalist shell, makes Pinco somewhere you’d want to linger, perhaps with a cocktail in hand, taking in the weekly Thursday jazz.
That’s Enrico, Lobethal. Photo: Giuseppe Silvestro
That’s Enrico, Lobethal
You don’t meet many “flour technicians”, but that’s how Venetian born pizzaiolo Enrico Sgarbossa cut his teeth, working in a famous flour mill in Italy and learning the glory of all things glutinous. His new eponymous venue, That’s Enrico , has been a welcome addition to the Hills suburb of Lobethal. Sgarbossa was offered space in the city, but he wanted to be part of the ever evolving Hills region, which includes Thelma and will welcome a series of new venues from Justin James later in the year. At That’s Enrico, Sgarbossa is serving pizza four ways, including his signature double-cooked dough baked on stone rather than in a pan. It’s crunchy on the outside and fluffy on the inside like a ciabatta. There’s also a rotating weekly pasta special and a tiramisu made by Sgarbossa’s wife and business partner Akiha.
Reporting by Daniela Frangos, Katie Spain and Nicole Wedding.
About the author
Lucy Bell Bird is Broadsheet’s national assistant editor.
Dining and Cooking