Made with their own fair hands

Bayside bound

The Organik Store and Café

At The Organik Store and Café in Glenelg, gluten free, dairy free, vegetarian, vegan and paleo options are centre stage on both the café and catering menus, garnished with a dash of fun (isn’t organic vodka in your cold pressed juice just the perfect way to welcome spring?).

The little store next to their café is loaded with local goodness. Kangaroo Island raw honey rubs shoulders with Alby’s gluten free breads and products from Port Elliot’s The Carob Kitchen, Willunga Pasta, fresh fruit and vegetables from Farmer Hayden, biodynamic eggs from Katham Springs, also on Kangaroo Island, and Willunga Hills organic vinegars. B.-d. Farm Paris Creek supply the café with organic milk. There are lots of milk alternatives available as well, including a house-made almond milk made fresh every day.

And all of this lovely food is used in the café kitchen and for catering customers too. Four Leaf Milling flour and B.-d. Farm Paris Creek butter make muffins a thing of beauty and their brie is a sumptuous match with house-made mushroom pesto Eve’s organic sour dough bread. Watch this space – new kitchen facilities next door will herald a boost to the catering business very soon.

Spicing up the Fleurieu

The Fleurieu Pantry

The Fleurieu Pantry café is in the beautiful historic Port Noarlunga, located at the back of a gorgeous (or should we say dangerous?) antique and gifts store, while the new pantry store is right next door. Gluten free and vegetarian meals, using fresh local hand-picked produce feature, are all ready to take home from the chill cabinet. Local favourites on the pantry shelves include Thistle Be Good, Fleurieu Milk, Willunga Almonds and a range of dressings and sauces from Matchett Productions.

Fleurieu fruit and vegetable specialists Scoop SA and Pyramid Organics provide the fresh and leafy things to the pantry kitchen, where they are teamed with Harding Fine Foods olive oil and tapenade, Brian’s Olives, Inman Valley eggs and Happy Foods bread to feed the café crowd and catering clients. You can even finish with a locally roasted coffee from the folks at Villere Coffee.
There’s a spicy twist to the take home meal options here. A current favourite that positively shouts school holiday treat to us is the Najobe Park beef burger, served atop a Happy Foods organic sour dough bun and rubbing shoulders with crisp local greens, cheese, red onion, tomato and pickles. But wait, there’s more. It also comes with a side of mini nachos or freshly made salad, and if that’s not exactly how you like it, you can collect yours on a gluten free bun, served bun-less as a salad, or as a vegan version with tofu. There really is something for everyone here.

Make mine meat

The Roaming Spit

The flavour focus is meaty when you seek out catering from those roving masters of charcoal, The Roaming Spit. Producing proper crackling is a real skill in our books, and a background turning the spit back home in Serbia is a pretty good way to earn your crackling stripes. It’s even better when that experience connects with a commitment to ethically raised South Australian meat in the form of award winning SchuAm Pork from the Barossa Valley and Richard Gunner’s Suffolk lamb for the spit.

The spit crew take care of all the sides too. Their salads are created with uber-fresh organic goodies from Family Organics, served with Riviera Bakery’s organic Turkish bread, spuds that have been tucked in the coals and corn on the cob, along with lashings of thick homemade garlic sauce.

Imagine all that happening at your place without you raising a hand. Cool. And that crackling? Yes, these guys are actually prepared to share their secrets of success with you as well as all this great food. Now that’s very hot indeed.

Country hospitality

Burra Fresh

Amid the gourmet goodies, fresh fruit and vegetables and with the smell of good coffee in the air, the Burra Fresh team love to spend time dreaming up delicious dishes for their catering menu. The local saltbush lamb is always a favourite, sourced from the local pastures via Coopers Butchers in Burra and heroed (if MasterChef can make that word a verb, so can we!) with Persian flavours as a main course. This goes down a treat at weddings, we’re told.

Waters Bakery make Burra Fresh’s favourite ciabatta and Turkish bread, and Warwick Grove produce is the olive oil of choice for these cooks. Rohde’s free range eggs from down the road in Tarlee add their fantastic flavour and colour to all manner of treats, including the top-rating Apple Frangipane Tarts. Yum!

Like mother wished she could make

Motherduck Café

Mother ducks are always fussing over their brood, ensuring they are safe, happy and well-fed. Motherduck Café take the same approach to their catering from their hip café base in the seaside haven of Goolwa.

We wouldn’t blame the guests at an upcoming Melbourne Cup lunch, for making a dash to be first past the post for dessert when the prize is decadent Lemon or Chocolate Espresso Tarts made with Matt’s free range eggs and citrus supplied to the café by enthusiastic local gardeners. Those eggs also add a silky golden richness to party dishes such as tuna cakes with tomato and caper salsa.

We can tell you Sea Grove olive oil from Mosquito Hill is a Motherduck menu regular, along with meats from Marriott’s in Strathalbyn (check the café menu for paleo-friendly bone broths) and breads from the fabulously named Hungry Caterpillar at Currency Creek.