I’ll be in and around Adelaide for a few days in January. A couple of days Barossa, couple of days Kangaroo Island, couple of days Adelaide city. It’s a family holiday (kids 15, 21, 23) and nearly all of us are keen foodies.
Would appreciate any recommendations for places to eat in particular. Wine reccos, or restaurants with great lists also welcome of course 
TIA
Hi Rauno,
There are not too many ‘great lists’ per se in Adelaide. For food I really like Arkhe. The chef was at Burnt Ends in Singapore. Africola is a lot of fun. Wine list is a little natty but you can find a drink. fermentAsian in the Barossa still has a killer list. There are some special bargains if you look closely. The food is still very good. Vintners has a good list and it an excellent restaurant and open every service except for Sunday nights. Otherness in Angaston is turning out wonderful food. Staguni is a relatively new addition to the dining scene and the food is very good. Wine list could do with a bit of work. The Eatery is a good spot for lunch and Elli Beer will let you take a bottle or two. Tell her I said it is ok! Char and Knead in Tanunda are decent casual places and First Drop Wines in Nuriootpa is also a good option for a casual meal. Harvest Kitchen at Jacob’s Creek is good. Fino is also another quality choice.
Darlings in Tanunda is a good choice for coffee.
have fun.
cheers
Jeremy
Rounding this out with our actual trip report. Thanks Jeremy and Kent for your suggestions! We actually ended up having only one single night in Adelaide, which was a shame, but thoroughly enjoyed our trip. Now I just need to fast for the next three months. I thoroughly enjoyed three days of heatwave because it provided the perfect excuse for doing nothing much after 3-4 hour lunches 
Fermentasian (Barossa) does indeed have a ridiculously great wine list. Yes, some of it is pricey but there were literally dozens of interesting and good-value wines I considered and would have been delighted to order and drink. Food is ‘oz-Asian’ (similar to a lot of NZ-Asian) in that the focus is on volume and punch. In hindsight, we should have scheduled this for late in our Barossa stay as it’s a great break from the more ubiquitous western-dominant Pac-Rim cooking.
Orleana (Barossa) is part of a flashy looking resort, and we were lucky to get a great table with floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides. The starters and desserts were great. I was the only one (of five) to not order the crabs & brioche starter, which won the popular vote segment for dish of the trip. I pointed out one of the windows ‘wow look at that kangaroo’ and snaffled a taste. Brioche, a sort of mayo / hollandaise type of sauce, generous and sweet crab meat, executed well. I did enjoy my asparagus with gribiche. The mains were just not good: King George Whiting is seldom improved by being cooked mushy; duck and orange can work when done sensitively; the pasta was actually really tasty (IMHO) but others disliked some overt bitterness; the pork was fine but less exciting than you’d think. Wine was unremarkable / decent, though kudos for having a good Xinomavro (which would have gone better with the duck if the duck had been good).
Hentley Farm (Barossa) was almost a whole kilometre down the road from our AirBNB, so of course we drove there. Otherwise we would have shown up drenched and dusty! This was an outstanding meal, absolutely at international benchmark levels. Four hours well spent. Not a single miss, and each dish was really engaging. My dish of the trip was the scallop sashimi, served in light oil(s) and aromatics that really made the sweetness of the meat pop. A subtle, perhaps more ‘geeky’ dish. Good pacing and progression of flavours. The criticism of Hentley would be the wine: a strong focus (almost exclusively) on their own wines. For our palates, the wines were basically utterly unsuitable for great, delicate, subtle and interesting cuisine. Other people’s mileage will vary of course.
Fino at Seppeltsfield (Barossa) was nice, everything served as sharing plates and with good care to match the portions / bits to the number of people. We always enjoy when we get six or eight of some small bite for the five of us and have to fight over the divisions 
so that was not required here. Only really one stand-out dish (a sort-of ceviche). Casual rather than particularly interesting food. And please don’t try to tell us that the difference between Crème Catalan and Crème Brulee is that you “brand” the top of a Catalan with a hot iron, just because you burnt it. The wine list had a range of interesting looking local wines, a few Europeans, but we mainly had a cocktail each on the day for a bit of a lighter day.
Sunset Food & Wine (Kangaroo Island) was a definite hit with the family. Several good value Chablis on the list, complemented the food very well. They also have a lovely range of reasonably priced Australian gems like Wendouree, but we weren’t eating wild boar and giraffe that evening. In the context of a more remote location, the food was really good and exceeded our expectations – probably just goes to show I shouldn’t have such a bias on my expectations! On a more serious note, the dishes just need some balancing and refinement to be top notch: For example, the egg-yolk-Raviolo was great; the Barramundi & Pork should have been two separate smaller dishes (as is the case with most surf’n’turf concepts); the egg with stuff in it needed some punch and crunch to level up. We had a great time, and also a shout out to the service.
The Fig Tree (Kangaroo Island) is a lovely setting. Wine options were very limited but that wasn’t an issue with a Marc Bredif (popular with the whole family, I was driving) quickly approved and provided. There were a handful of local wines, but don’t come here for the wine list. The food was similar in quality and style to Fino – shared plates, Australia clearly way ahead of New Zealand in counting the number of people at the table and serving bits and bobs appropriately. Everything tasty, much of it also interesting (e.g. specific local ingredients) and not trying to be particularly clever or innovative.
Shobosho (Adelaide) is modern/gai-jin Japanese. On our last night of the trip, we wanted ‘non-western’ and this place is well-reviewed. With a 3 am wake-up, I opted for a yuzu-infused-beer (less nice than that sounds) but did scan the wine list, which looked decent. Charred edamame to kick things off – as with so much edamame, all the great flavour is on the wrong side of the pod , good texture. Good scallop sashimi, excellent wontons. The crab soba was a highlight for me. Charred broccolini came on its own, but would have fared a lot better paired with the wagyu – rich and sticky as it was.