A Foodie Feast for the Eyes – Adelaide Central Market

Olives, dips, bread, cured meats, flowers, fruit, vegetables, coffee, tea, chocolates, pastries, sandwiches, pies, quiches, crepes.

After two laps of ogling, planning, pondering and snapping the produce on display at Adelaide Central Market, we still don’t know where to start. Another two laps prove similarly unenlightening.

As we flounder, all around us competent types are striding and deciding and ordering and eating – men in suits, mums with strollers, an older man with a bushy grey moustache and a thick German accent.

Long thin paper-wrapped parcels are tucked under besuited arms, as lawyerly conversations flow unchecked – adjournments, clients, weekend golf. Rough-looking round-bellied unionists hand out helium-filled balloons and brochures explaining the upcoming May Day public holiday.

The crowd is that multi-cultural mix I love so much. An African woman pushing a pram. An older Asian couple arm-in-arm, comparing prices.  I hear European accents mixed in with the Aussie drawl. I hear a splash of Italian as we pass a coffee shop.

It’s one of the last days of the Easter school holidays and kids are everywhere. Drinking hot chocolate in the fancy cafes, looking longingly at cake displays, trailing grumpily after produce-laden parents.

But the people are a mere diversion. First and foremost is the food. Adelaide Central Market is foodie-central.

Adelaide, once known as the city of churches, is regarded by the rest of Australia as slightly snobbish. Many Adeladians, including former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer who followed his father into parliament, speak with plummy almost-English accents.

The nose-in-the-air-ness may be the result of the region being founded by free settlers rather than convicts. The superiority is out and proud at Adelaide Central Market, where everything is fresh and enticing, ethnic and unusual and above all uber-gourmet.

But the refinement is tempered with Australian humour and country town friendliness. This is still Australia, where the butt-burning qualities of chili-laced salami are celebrated with the graphic name of “ring stinger” and kangaroo, buffalo and emus are marinated.

Words cannot completely capture the experience. Here is my pictorial ode to Adelaide Central Market, in all its Adeladian pricelessly posh glory.

Adelaide Central Market
45 Gouger Street, Adelaide, South Australia
Ph: +61-8-8231 5115
www.adelaidecentralmarket.com.au
(Check website for opening hours. Market tours are also available.)

By: Barbara

A career girl who dropped out, traveled, found love, and never got around to going home again. Now wrangling a cross-cultural relationship and two third culture kids.