Topiary

Newman’s Nursery, a garden centre in the verdant Tea Tree Gully foothills, is the unlikely setting for Topiary, one of Adelaide’s culinary gems. The cafe-restaurant occupies a 140-year-old cottage and its sandstone courtyard, where you feel a world away sitting beneath the wisteria-wrapped arbour.

Much has changed since Kane and Adele Pollard took over the longstanding teahouse, once known for scones and high tea. The husband-wife team baked their own bread and churned their own butter from the get-go. They added a garden-to-table breakfast menu that’s among Adelaide’s best. They brought fine dining into the fold, with lunches and dinners that went big on sustainability and small on waste.

The à la carte lunch menu balances fine-dining flourishes with crowd-pleasing pizzas, made with a sourdough starter that’s as old as the Pollards’ tenure at the venue. Other past highlights include pork meatballs encased in nasturtium leaves and served with veg-top salsa verde, and butterflied tommy ruff chargrilled in a pouch made of fig leaf that you get to unwrap at the table.

But the real lunch-time highlight is Kane’s five-course Forager’s Menu, with matched wines. Fans of Kane’s seasonal, produce-driven cooking should check out Place, a nomadic dining experience where a communal table is placed in an idyllic South Australian setting and guests are served a meal informed by their immediate surroundings.