Not every cafe can claim to be best in what they do, but Café Sia Gawler certainly have a taken out a bucketload of Restaurant and Catering Awards over the last couple of years that say they are, including the South Australian Café of the Year in 2016, and winner of Café Dining – Regional in this year’s awards. This local favourite has well and truly earned bragging rights so we thought we’d pick out our top five things you NEED to try.
So what makes Cafe Sia so successful we hear you ask? Quite simply, they serve up seriously delicious food done right. With a large menu covering the three main meals of the day, and plenty of snacks for in-between, we have already started planning a return visit to try out more of their fare. But it isn’t just the food that makes this place special. There is a definite sense of family at Café Sia. Yes the owners, Front of House Manager Gaby and Head Chef Danny are actually brothers, but it’s also the staff. Many of them long term welcome everyone with huge smiles and a chat when you walk in the door…you really do feel like you are part of one big happy family when you visit.
Café Sia have a fabulous brekky menu (available 8am – 11:30am) featuring favourites such as the Calabrian Breakfast; two free range eggs slowly poached in a Napolitana sauce of tomato, garlic and diced onion served with toasted Italian style bread that is perfect for lapping up all that saucy goodness. Then there is the Sia Stack (pictured above); two buttermilk pancakes with layers of short cut bacon and maple syrup topped with two poached free range eggs. As you can see, they definitely pass the poached egg test with all that golden gooey yolk. Tick! Those with a sweet tooth for brekky won’t be disappointed either with strawberry, maple syrup and whipped cream waffles, and mixed berry pancakes also on the menu.
There’s an impressive array of lunch and dinner items as well with pizza, pasta, burgers, seafood, steaks and plenty more; even encouraging diners to ‘make friends with salad’.
Although these popular items are all permanent fixtures on the Café Sia menu, the crew love to change things up and keep things interesting. They add six new “special” dishes to the menu each month including an entrée, mains, pizza, pasta, dessert and the very Insta-worthy “ultimate shake”. You really need to check out their Insta page for that one! One of the things we loved about these monthly specials was that many of these dishes are suggested by staff members other than the chefs – everyone gets a chance to be creative here, how awesome is that?
Speaking with owner Gaby, it’s evident just how much passion he has for Cafe Sia, their menu and the cafe’s staff. There is plenty of pride for all they have achieved and rightly so. We thoroughly enjoyed our time here and will definitely be back.
So next time you are in the neighbourhood, heading out to the Barossa, or just plain hungry for some delicious treats, check out Cafe Sia at Gawler. They’re open 7 days a week for breakfast, lunch and dinner in the Gawler Green Shopping Centre, 4 Tulloch Road, Evanston.
If you want a sneak peak of their monthly specials, keep up with what’s new on Facebook.