“Adelaide is Melbourne 20 years ago,” Mathieu Smeysters tells Broadsheet. “I think we’re going places.”
Smeysters is the venue manager of Station Road, a restaurant he co-owns along with the East End Cellars and Mother Vine team. As he sits next to head chef Baine Stubbs in their impressive new brasserie, it’s clear Adelaide came into its own as a gastronomic destination a while ago.
Stubbs is a massive get for Adelaide. Born in New Zealand, he worked as senior sous-chef at Melbourne’s Vue de Monde before heading the kitchens at Parisian restaurants Ellsworth and Clamato – sibling to Septime, which is currently number 11 on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. Back in Australia, Stubbs is joined in the Station Road kitchen by Parisian-born pastry chef Rosanna Petit, who was previously at Tasmanian fine-dining institution Van Bone.
“Adelaide has an amazing dining scene already. I think we’re going to be a great complement to that,” says Smeysters. “I think we don’t have a restaurant in Adelaide that’s currently doing what we are doing [at Station Road with Stubbs]. We’re just a great offering, which continues the expansion that Adelaide has been going through the last couple of years since Botanic opened under Justin James, and suddenly we had the best restaurant in Australia.”
On the menu is French-accented modern Australian cuisine made with high-end local produce. (“To me, modern Australian is just using Australian produce and things that you can’t get in Europe,” says Stubbs.) Stubbs is particularly excited about producers like Mayura Station, Magra Lamb, Section 28, Ngeringa Farms and wholesalers like The Afishonado.
The approachable brasserie-style menu includes snacks like mushroom and gruyere tart, zingy hand-picked mud crab served on a betel leaf with preserved chilli, and an umami-packed round of fluffy omelette topped with Tasmanian sea urchin. Entrees refuse to be pigeonholed, with rich southern rock lobster cannelloni with serrano ham and mornay sauce, and Game Farm quail ballotine wrapped in pancetta sitting alongside delicately carved sashimi. Mains include fillets of fish in dashi beurre blanc, Queensland tiger prawns with ’nduja tempura and Mayura Station Wagyu 9+ eye fillet with sauce au poivre and pommes dauphine. Desserts lean classic with Paris Brest and rum babas.
On the ground floor of Festival Tower, not far from the Adelaide Festival Centre and railway station, the venue is expansive, with more than 100 outdoor seats and 110 indoor seats. There’s a mix of bar seating wrapping around the front of the open kitchen, high-top tables and tables tucked in the corner of the dining room clad with warm wood and beigey, pink tiles.
“We wanted to be a destination for people that want to have an amazing meal, but also a place where you could go to just for a Negroni and champagne and a few snacks. No commitments, whether you’re going to dine after somewhere else or coming after having had dinner at another amazing venue,” says Smeysters.
The drinks list is what you’d expect from the team behind Adelaide’s best wine bars. The house champagne is Louis Roederer and Cristal is available by the glass. Beyond champagne, “We started putting away wines [from Mother Vine and East End Cellars] three years ago for a wine list we would build when we had the food offering to match it, and when we [decided to open Station Road] we said, ‘Okay this is going to be it’.”
Station Road
1 Station Road, Adelaide
(08) 8102 1980
