Photos: Andrew Teoh.
If you’re heading to Port Adelaide this weekend, there’s no better place to stop in for a delicious bite to eat and warm up by the fire than café The Banksia Tree.
Even featuring a mini library with a selection of pre-loved books for you to thumb through, the café is celebrating the end of lockdown and increased capacity for hospitality venues by offering $5 mimosas for the rest of the week!
The Banksia Tree’s menu changes with the seasons, but it always has one constant: ingredients that are sustainable, local, fresh, and delicious.
The popular Port Adelaide café focuses on designing its dishes around produce that’s from South Australia to benefit both the environment and the food’s taste.
“It’s simple: If food travels less miles, it’s fresher, and someone locally is benefitting from our purchase,” says Fabian Folghera, the Banksia Tree’s owner.
“Ingredients taste better when they’re grown in season and naturally with normal rain and irrigation; The flavor difference is as huge as the impact on the environment.”
The popular Port Adelaide café boasts a plethora of delicious dishes made using fresh produce and innovative combinations of flavours.
The café adds a unique flare to each of their offerings, even the classics. For example, they have a French toast, but with bee pollen and house-made Davidson plum jam, and a chicken burger, but with brined buttermilk chicken, Wombok slaw, and lemon myrtle aioli.
The seasonal menu is geared toward homemade ingredients and dishes with a twist, and it’s also designed to showcase autumnal produce, such as pears, kiwi, persimmons, pumpkin, eggplants.
Other popular favourites include the pumpkin and pine––a dish that comes with house-made romesco, quinoa, and feta, the banana bread––made with fire-toasted, house-made bread, house-made coconut yoghurt, and seasonal, fire-grilled fruit, and eggplant on toast––with tahini dressing, fermented chili dressing, and native muntries on sourdough.
The chilly weather inspiration is also evident in the venue, which is currently cosy and stacked with firewood.
In addition to playing with flavour combinations, Folghera and head chef Aaron reid have played with words in the updated list, naming their dishes with quirky double entendres. The “egg slut,” has hash browns, fermented chili and scrambled eggs, and the “tofucken,” is smoked grilled tofu with smoked hummus and crispy wombok; The menu is not only mouth-watering, but also tongue-in-cheek.
To wash it all down, the Banksia Tree also has its liquor licence, serving up gin and tonics with peppercorn, “not an espresso martini” with Big Shed Golden Stout Time Vodka and Coconut Nitro Coffee, and a Bloody Mary with native pepperberry. They also have staples such as beer, wine, and coffee. If the meals and firewood don’t warm you up, the alcohol sure will!
And better yet, the Banksia Tree’s offerings won’t break the bank.
“We make everything in a way that doesn’t cost the environment or your wallet,” Folghera says.
The menu is now on offer at the Port Adelaide venue, so be sure to check it out if you’re after a delicious, SA-supplied meal. They’re also hosting a bottomless brunch on May 30, so if you’re up for three courses and bottomless mimosas, that’s a good time to check it out!
Find the Banksia Tree at 147 St. Vincent Street, Port Adelaide.
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