Foodie things to do in South Australia

Five things, in the order we’d do them. Walk the Adelaide Central Market, which has fed the city since 1869 and is still where its chefs shop. Spend a Saturday morning at the Willunga Farmers Market, then an afternoon in the McLaren Vale cellar doors ten minutes up the road. Cook something with your own hands in a working venue, which is the one experience that comes home with you. Eat oysters, kingfish and whiting somewhere you can see the water. And time the trip for a festival: Tasting Australia in Adelaide each May, or the Fleurieu Food Festival, which fills the whole of August.

The Adelaide Central Market, first thing in the morning. It’s an undercover market in the middle of the city with cheesemongers, butchers, fishmongers, bakers and produce stalls that have been there for generations, and it tells you in one lap what South Australia grows. Get a coffee, buy a cheese you’ve never heard of, and ask the stallholders where it comes from; most of them will tell you the farm. From the market it’s a short walk to Gouger Street and Chinatown for lunch. Adelaide also hosts Tasting Australia every May, ten days of chef dinners, market days and masterclasses, and it’s the one week of the year when the whole state’s food turns up in one place.

More than anywhere else within an hour of the city, which is why we’re based here. McLaren Vale, 45 minutes south, is shiraz and grenache country with dozens of cellar doors, many with restaurants looking over the vines. The Willunga Farmers Market on Saturday mornings is the region’s front door: growers, bakers, cheesemakers and the people who make the olive oil, all at one market. Drive on and the peninsula turns into dairy and grazing country, with small distilleries, strawberry farms and almond orchards between the vineyards. Cut Hill Wall Distillery in Hindmarsh Valley runs tastings alongside working stills, and Lost Phoenix Farm next door does a shared table lunch from the farm. On the coast, Normanville and Port Willunga are where locals eat fish and chips on the sand, and the boats bring in King George whiting and kingfish. Victor Harbor and Granite Island are half an hour further south, and from June to September southern right whales calve in the bay.

Our own classes live here. We teach hands-on pasta, gnocchi, mozzarella, dumplings, sausage making, pizza, hibachi steak with native ingredients, paella and kingfish in a McLaren Vale cellar door, the distillery and an 1856 homestead in Yankalilla, with Fleurieu produce on the bench. Everything a visitor asks us about the Fleurieu is answered here.

Yes, and it’s a different day from the Fleurieu. The Barossa is an hour north of Adelaide and is Australia’s best known wine region for a reason: old vine shiraz, grand cellar doors and a German settler food tradition that still shows up in the bakeries, smallgoods and the Saturday morning Barossa Farmers Market at Angaston. Build the day around two or three cellar doors and a long lunch, and leave room in the boot. If you only have one day out of Adelaide, choose between the Barossa and the Fleurieu by what you want: the Barossa for wine history and grand estates, the Fleurieu for the coast, the markets and cooking something yourself.

The Hills are twenty minutes from the city and the coolest wine region in the state, so this is where the sparkling, chardonnay and pinot noir come from. Hahndorf is the old German town with the bakeries and the strawberry farm on its doorstep, and the villages around it, Stirling, Uraidla, Woodside, have cellar doors, cheesemakers and pubs with serious kitchens. It’s the easy half day when you don’t want to drive far, and in autumn the leaves alone are worth the trip.

Coming out of the city you can do the Hills in half a day. Our own classes are 45 minutes the other way, south through McLaren Vale and down the Fleurieu coast.

The Eyre Peninsula, if you have the time to get there. Coffin Bay oysters and Port Lincoln tuna and kingfish are the state’s most famous seafood, and eating them at the source, seven hours’ drive or a short flight from Adelaide, is a trip in itself. Closer to home, Kangaroo Island is a 45 minute ferry from Cape Jervis at the bottom of the Fleurieu and has its own oysters, marron, honey from the island’s Ligurian bees and a strong farm gate scene. And you don’t have to leave the Fleurieu at all: King George whiting and kingfish come off the boats at Normanville and Cape Jervis, and our Coast to Coals Kingfish masterclass at Hastwell and Lightfoot teaches you to cook a whole fish over the coals.

Two, and they’re in different seasons. Tasting Australia runs in Adelaide each May, in the mild weather after vintage, with well over a hundred events across the city and the regions, from chef collaborations to producer masterclasses. The Fleurieu Food Festival takes the whole of August, with vineyard feasts, market days and events at farms, wineries, breweries and distilleries across the peninsula, and our classes run right through it, including a family event at the Willunga markets. Book accommodation early for both. Outside those windows, autumn vintage in March and April is the busiest and prettiest time in every wine region.

Autumn. March to May is vintage in every wine region, the weather is settled, and Tasting Australia lands in May. Winter is the Fleurieu Food Festival in August, whale season at Victor Harbor and the best time to cook by a fire. Spring brings the first strawberries and lamb, and summer is beach weather with long evenings in the vineyards. There isn’t a bad month, only a busy one: book early for May and August.

Yes, and it’s the part of the trip people talk about afterwards, because it’s the only one you take home as a skill. We run hands-on classes in working venues on the Fleurieu: you cook at your own bench, up to 24 guests with one team member for every eight, two and a half hours for the $125 classes with the food packed to take home, or closer to three for the masterclasses that finish with a long table lunch. Every guest then gets access to our Fleurieu Cooking Club, with a self-paced version of the class, a place to ask questions and show off what you’ve made since, and recipes and tools built for our guests, which is why so many people come back. Classes run all year and most start late morning on a weekend, so a class, a cellar door and the coast road home fit in one day from Adelaide. The questions people ask us before booking are answered here.

Jackie Mazzocato, who trained in the kitchens at Regency TAFE straight after school, built a career elsewhere, and came back to food to start Fleurieu Food and Wine, and John Mazzocato, who brings more than forty years in the wine industry to the drinks side of every class. Around them is a team of qualified chefs, master butchers and professionally trained presenters, including a Swiss trained chef who ran his own restaurant, a master butcher, a My Kitchen Rules finalist and a Spencer Gulf kingfish specialist. Jackie trained as an adult educator, which is why the classes are built so a total beginner and a confident cook can stand at the same bench. Fleurieu Food and Wine won Gold for Excellence in Food Tourism at the 2025 South Australian Tourism Awards.

Wattleseed, pepperberry, saltbush, quandong, muntries and lemon myrtle turn up on menus and market stalls across the state, and South Australia has a growing number of growers and foragers supplying them. The easiest way to understand them is to cook with them. Our hibachi steak masterclass and Native Cooking Experience at Bungala House put wattleseed, pepperberry and saltbush on your bench with premium South Australian steak, so you learn where each one belongs rather than just tasting it once.

Day one, the Central Market for breakfast and a wander, then an hour south to a late morning cooking class at Cut Hill Wall Distillery or Hastwell and Lightfoot, lunch at Lost Phoenix Farm or a McLaren Vale cellar door, two more cellar doors, and dinner in McLaren Vale or Port Willunga. Stay in McLaren Vale or on the coast. Day two, the Willunga Farmers Market if it’s Saturday, the coast road south through Aldinga and Myponga to Normanville, a swim, and a long table masterclass lunch at Bungala House, then an hour and ten minutes back to Adelaide. If you have a third day, keep going south to Deep Creek National Park and Cape Jervis, or take the ferry to Kangaroo Island.

Two days in Adelaide and the Hills, two on the Fleurieu with a class and the coast, one in the Barossa, and two on Kangaroo Island via the Cape Jervis ferry. That covers cool climate wine, the state’s two great shiraz regions, the markets, a hands-on class, the coast and an island of farm gates, and you never drive more than two hours in a day. Swap Kangaroo Island for the Clare Valley and its riesling trail if you’d rather stay on the mainland, or for the Eyre Peninsula if oysters at the source matter more than anything else.

A car, and a designated driver or a chauffeur if wine is the point. Every region on this page is a straightforward drive from Adelaide on good roads: the Hills in twenty minutes, McLaren Vale in 45, the Barossa in an hour, the Fleurieu coast in an hour and a bit, Clare in two. Hastwell and Lightfoot in McLaren Vale can be reached by bus to the town and a short taxi or Uber, and for groups we recommend AM PM Chauffeurs for up to eight. Kangaroo Island is the SeaLink ferry from Cape Jervis, and you can take the car across.

Ready to add a class to the itinerary? See the next classes on the Fleurieu.