After a quick lunch of Cornish pasties at the old-fashioned bakery in Willunga’s main street, we wander up the road to find a café and store, 3 Monkeys, in three small rooms of an 1860s stone building. Coffee? Please. One sip and we’re sold. This is pump-the-air-with-your-fist coffee. This is worth-driving-from-Adelaide coffee. We find out the bloke who makes it, Mark Potter, is a former winner of the Fleurieu Peninsula’s Best Barista award. “I’m actually making better coffee now,” he says.
Expectations? I have a few. We’re visiting the region on the trail of the buzz that Willunga, near the town of McLaren Vale in the famously foodie wine region, is a contender for foodiest small town in Australia. Like gumshoes, we’ve identified places and people of interest to suss out the claim. There’s not much time, but I’ve been here before. Many times. As a child, round here was where I first spotted the sea, as big as the sky, on the drive to our annual family holiday in Port Elliot.
The place: Willunga, with its original sandstone buildings, got the good looks; the nearby town of McLaren Vale is the ugly sister. (If you’re here for the food, probably the only thing you need to see in McLaren Vale’s suburban-strip main street is a shop called Blessed Cheese.) Very few wine regions in Australia can boast a cute, unspoilt town as countrified as Willunga at their heart; the closest likeness I can think of is in New Zealand, at Martinborough. Willunga has the proximity (it’s practically an outer suburb of Adelaide), the produce (thanks to the Mediterranean climate and St Vincent’s Gulf down the road) and the passion.
The markets: The Willunga Farmers’ Market, founded in 2002, draws a crowd of 3000-plus every Saturday. This is where you will find people such as Barry Beach of Beach Organics, who for the past 25 years has pursued various organic, biodynamic and perma-cultural ventures, among them the production of beautiful, wood-oven bread. “I used to be considered eccentric,” he says. “Now I’m just considered sensible.”
The B&B: We stay at Willunga House, a two-storey, 1850s heritage building around the corner from the markets. The white-walled, timber-floored rooms have a simple grace. As one of the few B&Bs in the region to provide a cooked breakfast, it’s a good place for lazy food-lovers. We linger over poached quinces and pears, fresh kiwi fruit from the backyard tree, eggs from the backyard chooks and toasted Beach Organics sourdough with orange curd. Afterwards, owner Nick Scarvelis shows us around the kitchen garden and introduces Stevie the blind hen, saved from the saucepan after he trained her to fend for herself.
The produce: Less lazy food-lovers can get their hands dirty at the Producers of McLaren Vale – part guesthouse, part small-batch winery, part restaurant-by-arrangement and part boot camp. Here, you can press your own olive oil, make your own wine, quince paste, bread … whatever you’re itching to prepare from scratch, the ingredients are probably growing here on this bucolic 32ha property. If you’re thinking rustic, stop now: home base is a new, Max Pritchard-designed glass house based on a Spanish courtyard design. The day we drop by, the bounty of the season is spread out on a table: almonds, olive oil, honey, preserved kaffir limes in verjuice, poached quinces. And trays of orange peel, drying in the sun. “I try not to waste anything,” says co-owner Tori Moreton.
The restaurants: Tony Love, food and wine critic for The Advertiser, says McLaren Vale/Willunga’s restaurant culture is more vibrant than that of any other wine region in the state. “It’s a fantastic culture for a country town,” he says. “I think they understand the marriage of food and wine a lot better than the other regions.” He’s right, but it still has a way to go on the national scoreboard. High marks for the widespread enthusiasm for building menus around the local goodies, particularly the luxury of wild-caught garfish, Coorong mullet, calamari and King George whiting (get it while you can; according to fishing industry insiders, the whiting population is under severe pressure); and for flashes of excellence, such as Penny’s Hill chef Ben Sommariva’s wild kale and green peppercorn soup, or the crispy-skinned duck breast with twice-cooked duck leg and baked quince at Salopian Inn. But with the exception of the always high-achieving d’Arry’s Verandah, and the great gastropub that is the Victory Hotel, consistency of quality across food, wine and service can sometimes be wanting in the region’s restaurants. And why is the cellar at Salopian so very understocked?
New stuff: Willunga’s real-bread culture took another leap forward with the opening last month of The Gourmet Baker in a rustic barn at the back of 3 Monkeys. Available now are wood-fired, organic, hand-mixed breads; baker Matt Price has plans for wood-fired pizza. And there are two new cafes opening in the main street in the next few months.
The verdict: Willunga has a head-start over its counterparts in NSW and Victoria in that South Australia is free of genetically modified crops, making the tourism bodies’ claims of clean, green food easier to substantiate. It has so much else going for it: the town, the wines, the youthful energy, the strong regional food culture, the embrace of organics and sustainability, the enthusiasm for new ideas and carefully managed development. Like some other Australian winery towns, it lacks a weeknight restaurant culture, the downside of the lunch focus at the winery restaurants. Foodiest small town in Australia? It’s a contender. It’s a tough competition.