Adelaide's Best New Restaurants of 2025

Adelaide’s Best New Restaurants of 2025 | Broadsheet

Adelaide’s love affair with all things Italian continues, but amid a wave of pizza and pasta were standout Greek, Turkish and Korean openings that caught our eye.

Adelaide is reliable in all the best ways. There are cardinal truths that govern the city of churches. If you’ve got enough pep in your step, you can get from South Terrace to North Terrace in less than 30 mins. The city becomes unrecognisably busy and buzzy during “Mad March”. Everyone’s obsessed with Italian food.

This is my fourth end-of-year restaurant wrap for Broadsheet and every year I predict that Adelaide’s finally reached “peak Italian”. What a fool I’ve been.

For another year running, our best new restaurant openings are dominated by Italian and European fare. Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising. A significant proportion of Adelaide’s population is of Italian descent, and generations of Italian immigrants have made an indelible impact on the city’s food scene. Needless to say, almost half of this list is Italian. Buon appetito.

The best food in Adelaide is not necessarily prepared by trained chefs, but by people who are sharing their culture as a way to connect: like Enver Tuğrul and Gökçe Özbecene, who work office jobs during the week and serve Turkish food in their living room one night a week; and Vasili Petropoulos who, after a decades-long career in hospitality, has only recently opened a restaurant that dives full force into his Greek heritage.

Here are Adelaide’s best new restaurant openings of 2025.

Joe's at Sabella, McLaren Vale. Photography: Megan Cox

Joe’s at Sabella, McLaren Vale. Photography: Megan Cox

Joe’s at Sabella (and Taco José), McLaren Vale

Timmy Forster and Lilli Willoughby have had a good year. They took over Joe’s at Sabella in February and quickly had tongues wagging. Their locals night, which began in March, garnered a cult following thanks to the excellent-value proposition: a pasta special, house-made focaccia and sides made with local ingredients all for $20 a person with free BYO. “The thing is, we don’t have 150 people booked in (with 100 more on a waitlist), just because we have free BYO. It’s due to the community and culture we’ve nurtured,” Forster says.

Beyond the pasta specials, the extended menu features honest and down-to-earth Italian fare, including pizzas which range from standard margheritas to white clam pies (made with local razor clam, chowder bechamel and speck). The pair are teasing a pizza night which will be launched this summer, but for now they’ve got their hands full with their second “venue”: Taco José.

Taco José opened in November, a “proper Mexican food spot” that operates from Friday to Sunday in the courtyard of the church. Forster spent a year living in Sinaloa and has been involved in various Mexican culinary projects in Australia. He’s channelled his passion and experience into a tight menu of fewer than 10 items.

There are three types of tacos, including a stunning chicken number that involves one whole week of marination, a rice and bean dish, and street chips. All the meats are woodfired for big, bold, smoky flavours. To drink, there are mezcal slushies and Agua de Jamaica.

Fall From Grace, Aldinga

Fall From Grace is not new. The 1850s space has long operated as a hospitality venue, but in July it entered a new era under the stewardship of Jimmy Toone and Jo Leal. The hotshot hospo couple brought a European sensibility to the space with big shareable mains and snacks. Toone is a former head chef at The Salopian Inn and the couple ran pop-ups – Secret Pizza Club and Secret Pasta Club – and had a residency at Loc. Pizza is on the menu, but they’re hoping to switch things up as often as possible with chef collabs and changing cuisines. To drink, there’s a mix of old-school and new-school (read: natural) wines.

It’s quickly become an industry favourite, and local chefs and winemakers can invariably be spotted in the dining room. It’s one of many new openings this year that prove some of Adelaide’s most interesting new spots are opening outside the city.

Mini Lokanta, North Adelaide. Photography: 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, but it’s no facsimile of approachable homey charm – this is the home of Enver Tuğrul Özbecene and Gökçe Özbecene. The couple moved to Australia from Turkey four years ago, and set up Mini Lokanta in the front room of their 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 in March, they found themselves practically booked out until the end of the year. In that time, they welcomed many of Adelaide’s top chefs, a whole host of fooderati, and the Masterchef cast.

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 without a corkage fee but there’s also a small drinks menu including raki, salgam, wine and beers.

Mensa, Kent Town. Photography: Giuseppe Silvestro

Mensa, Kent Town

Okay, you caught us. Mensa did indeed open in 2024, but missed the cut-off for our 2024 end-of-year lists – so we’re including it here. In a city known for good Italian food, Mensa stands apart. It’s worthy of distinction based on pedigree alone. The Kent Town eatery comes from Eugenio Maiale, who co-founded Auge and Citrus in the early 2000s; Claudio Ferraro, one of the founders of Cibo Ristorante and its subsequent franchises, plus Valentino’s; and Zoran Pavlovic, who first met Maiale when he was working as a dishie at Citrus and has since clocked time at institutions like Chianti, Press and Osteria Oggi. In short, there’s some topnotch dining DNA running behind this place.

The open kitchen is turning out traditional and fancified Italian dishes, including a selection of house-extruded pastas. A classic rabbit ragu with thick ribbons of pappardelle, and a (seasonally available) pumpkin-filled pasta with butter and sage were two early favourites. Alternatively, you can snack on pasta fritta with honey, ’nduja and mascarpone or Abruzzese-style crumbed and fried olives stuffed with pork mince. The dessert menu has won fans for its cannoli and boozy mascarpone rum baba.

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 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 in early 2026. 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.

Vasili’s Table, West Beach. Photography: Giuseppe Silvestro

Vasili’s Table, West Beach

Vasili’s Table only opened in August, but the concept was conceived about a decade earlier. Chef Vasili Petropoulos, who previously worked as executive chef for Bill Granger’s restaurant group Bills, wanted to open a restaurant that celebrated the specifics of his Greek heritage, particularly his parents’ homelands – the island of Ikaria and the town of Kalamata. He converted the car park of the West Beach space into a kitchen garden complete with beehives, vegetable patches and a chicken house. The fit-out was retro and nostalgic, with a breeze-block feature wall and a stage for live music.

Petropoulos says the menu is changing “almost daily”. There’s a strong focus on vegetables – a nod to Ikaria’s status as a Blue Zone region – with snake bean stew (fasolakia), boiled greens (horta) and fava. Everything from pasta to pita is made in-house. The team is producing its own honey (from the beehives), taramosalata, baba ganoush, zucchini dip, loukaniko sausages, pickled vegetables and boozy gelato (flavoured with ouzo and mastiha). There’s also baklava ice-cream and house-made spirits.

Vasili’s Table is not the only Greek venue opening in Adelaide this year, but it is the strongest. The “Greek revival” trend has swept the nation and was particularly notable in Sydney and Melbourne. We’re predicting that in 2026, more local venues will follow in Petropoulos’s wake with new spots that celebrate the fragrant, fresh dishes and comforting classics of Greek cuisine.

Tarantino's, CBD. Photography: Giuseppe Silvestro

Tarantino’s, CBD. Photography: Giuseppe Silvestro

Tarantino’s, CBD

Big Easy Group’s Oliver Brown is the first to admit that House of George wasn’t working. It was the hospitality group’s second venue in the same East End space. Initially, it opened as contemporary Greek taverna Yiasou George in 2019 before revamping as House of George four years later, which allowed the venue to draw on culinary influences beyond the Med. There’s little room for error in the restaurant game and knowing when to call it a day and pivot a concept is the hallmark of an experienced team.

So in June, the team threw the “big plates thrown in the middle” schtick out entirely, closed, renovated and reopened as Tarantino’s, a New York-Italian-inspired bar and grill that blends old school nostalgia with contemporary flair.

The menu mixes old-school Italian dishes with head chef Shane Wilson’s love of Asian cuisines. Expect pork and fennel sausage pasta with kimchi and oyster sauce, or stracciatella topped with a Lao Gan Ma-style crispy chilli oil. Steak and large proteins are flame-seared on the open-hearth grill – the centrepiece of the restaurant. For dessert, there’s the tiramiso (tiramisu with miso caramel) or you can round out the night with a mini Negroni.

Icardis, North Adelaide

Icardis is one of the newest restaurants to make our list, but co-owner Jared Chahoud is hardly new to hospitality. He grew up working alongside his father, Gaby Chahoud, who owns several venues on the same North Adelaide strip. In November, Jared stepped into the big leagues, opening Icardis alongside Andrew Marks. The burgundy and walnut-hued space sits just 500 metres from his father’s first venue (Pellegrini Cafe). The menu draws influence from across the Mediterranean, with pastas including rigatoni with pork and fennel sausage, borlotti and porcini; a Grecian grilled octopus with chickpeas and roast grapes; and a Middle Eastern wood-roasted pumpkin served with date molasses, sesame and rosemary. Jared calls the woodfired oven “the heart and soul of the venue”. It’s used to cook flatbread (perfect for mopping up whipped feta); Skull Island prawns with garlic butter; chicken with corn, zucchini and graviera (a Greek hard cheese); and an orange cake with burnt meringue. The wine list eschews the Med and instead leans local. “We could have gone down the Mediterranean route, but we wanted the best of the best and SA has that,” says Jared.

88 Pocha, Norwood. Photography: Giuseppe Silvestro

88 Pocha, Norwood

Steven Lee, the director of the Plus 82 Group, has transformed his Norwood eatery CNB into a dakgalbi restaurant called 88 Pocha. For the uninitiated, dakgalbi is a dish that originated in the city of Chuncheon. Chicken – marinated in garlic, gochujang, onions, ginger and soy sauce – is brought to your table raw and then cooked in a deep pan. It’s a deeply comforting dish that’s rarely seen on Adelaide menus. Beyond dakgalbi, there are side dishes including oysters, fried chicken, bibimbap steak tartare and kimchi pancakes. Dessert includes hotteok, a street food favourite consisting of a shallow-fried pancake filled with brown sugar, sunflower and pumpkin seeds.

Reporting by Jessica Galletly, Katie Spain, Emily Taliangis and Nicole Wedding.

The Best of Broadsheet 2025 is proudly presented by Square, Kia, NAB and Four Pillars. The restaurants in this article were selected independently by Broadsheet’s editors.

About the author

Lucy Bell Bird is Broadsheet’s national assistant editor.