Aurora restaurant, Adelaide: Location, menu and cuisine

The Aurora restaurant on Adelaide’s Light Square offers sharing plates and tasting menus. There’s a South African tinge to the menu, but the produce is defiantly local.

The Aurora restaurant, Adelaide, is a relatively new addition to the city’s increasingly impressive dining scene. It’s the sort of restaurant that taps into as many buzz phrases as possible – sustainability, open kitchen, sharing plates, tasting menu and so on.

This Adelaide restaurant aims for world class dining that’s accessible. Whether it succeeds is a matter of personal taste.

**15 fabulous Adelaide experiences to supercharge your visit**

DOLPHINS 🐬: Swim with wild dolphins, kayak with the resident bottlenose pod or watch them on a dolphin cruise.
FOOD AND WINE 🍷: Indulge on Adelaide food tour including Adelaide Central Market. Or try a wine discovery tour with tastings at the National Wine Centre. Or the ultimate Penfolds Magill Estate experience with full estate tour & Grange tasting.
WILDLIFE 🐨: Spot koalas on a guided Morialta nature hike. Or walk from Waterfall Gully to Mount Lofty with entrance to Cleland Wildlife Park.
CRUISES ⛵: Watch the sun set on a twilight coastal cruise, get to know the city on a Torrens River cruise or take a high tea cruise aboard the Popeye.
SPORT 🏏: Dare to take on the Adelaide Oval Roofclimb or enter the fabled scoreboard on the behind-the-scenes stadium tour.
ACTION 🚵‍♂️: Descend Mount Lofty on a downhill mountain bike tour or kayak along the Torrens River.

Where is the Aurora restaurant, Adelaide?

The Aurora restaurant is on Light Square in Adelaide’s CBD. It’s a new addition to a traditionally quieter end of town. And this Adelaide restaurant clearly wants to be a destination in its own right.

The cuisine at Aurora defies easy categorisation, although there are certainly some South African elements courtesy of chef Brendan Wessels’ personal heritage.

The most notable of these elements is the purpose-built braai in the centre of the kitchen, used for cooking meats and a few other goodies.

Aurora restaurant menu

The Aurora restaurant menu leans heavily on locally-sourced produce, and is designed to be shared. Smaller dishes include South Australian Maori octopus with dashi, ricotta and potato for $29. There’s also a confit chicken wing with pate, onion soubise and beer for the same price.

Larger dishes include Cone Bay butter barramundi with coriander and fermented potato for $49.

Pick your perfect Adelaide day trips

Barossa Valley tours: 1. Wine-tasting with lunch 🍷. 2. Food and wine tour. 3. Small group wine tour with exclusive VIP tastings.
Kangaroo Island in a day – including sea lions 🦭, koalas 🐨and national parks.
Adelaide Hills tours: 1. Sights plus Murray River lunch cruise combo. 2. Small group cheese, chocolate & wine tour with Hahndorf German village.
McLaren Vale tours: 1. Small group wine tour with lunch. 2. Hop-on hop-off wineries tour 🍷. 3. Food and wine indulgence tour, including the gloriously weird d’Arenberg Cube.
Victor Harbor and southern highlights tour – including the Granite Island horse-drawn tram.

Tasting menu at Aurora restaurant, Adelaide

But Aurora’s heart is really in its six course tasting menu. This costs $150 and sees a series of the chef’s favourite dishes brought out over two or three hours.

Given the dishes have a strong leaning towards rich flavours, not everyone is going to enjoy this. You’ll also get the vibe that they’re doing this because it’s what great restaurants do, rather than because it’s the most enjoyable way to eat these particular dishes.

For the full menu, visit the restaurant website.