The Sitchu Awards 2025 Winners: South Australia

The 2025 Sitchu Awards winners are in, and Mensa took out Best New Restaurant Opening, Rosemont Hall won Best Date Night Venue, Yolk Cafe claimed Best Coffee Spot, and Jenny’s Bakery won Best Bakery. After thousands of nominations and votes from readers across South Australia, all nine category winners have been crowned across food, drink, lifestyle and travel. These are the venues, suburbs and local businesses readers voted as the very best of South Australia in 2025.

Best Date Night Venue in Adelaide 2025

The restaurants, rooftop hideaways, or bars that set the stage for unforgettable evenings.

Winner: Rosemont Hall

After more than two years closed following a devastating fire, this beloved Prospect Road Art Deco hall is back and better than ever. It runs a multi-concept operation: casual bar drinks, Sunny’s Shop noodle salads in the laneway, and dim sum-style Cantonese from Mr Chan inside the hall, all with a fuss-free, flavour-first energy that suits a date night as easily as a group catch-up. The restored heritage bones give the whole place a romance that’s hard to manufacture and impossible to ignore.

Prospect

Runner-up: Fugazzi Bar & Dining Room

Fugazzi on Leigh Street is the kind of place that makes a long Tuesday feel like a Saturday: velvet booths, marble finishings, oysters to start, and a menu of contemporary Italian done with real flair. The room has an easy confidence, and the wine list is exactly as good as you’d want it to be at a place like this.

Adelaide 

Best Deli or Sandwich Spot in Adelaide 2025

Where the sandwiches are stacked high, the flavours bold, and tomorrow’s cravings are guaranteed.

Winner: Bottega Bandito

This modern cafe and delicatessen is where Adelaide’s brunch obsessives go when they want something with a bit more edge. The menu is broad enough to please a table of varying tastes, but it’s the sandos that have built the reputation, available until sold out, which tells you everything. Brunch runs until 3pm so there’s no need to rush, though the queue outside on a Saturday morning suggests plenty of people do anyway.

Prospect & Adelaide

Runner-up: Frankly Bagels

The humble bagel gets the full treatment at Frankly Bagels: plain, poppy seed, sesame seed, or everything, loaded with nine filling combos that rotate with the seasons and tip between sweet and savoury with equal confidence. The rotating specials keep regulars second-guessing their usual order, and great coffee and gluten-free options mean no one at the table misses out.

Prospect & Norwood

Best Bakery in Adelaide 2025

Those irresistible loaves, pastries, or cakes you’ll happily queue for.

Winner: Jenny’s Bakery

If you’ve ever walked past Jenny’s Bakery, you know the moment you hit that warm, buttery wave of fresh pastry that your day just got better. Creations like the tiramisu croissant and matcha strawberry cronut have built a following that spans suburbs and postcodes, and 2025 got even sweeter with the opening of a third location in Keswick, joining the beloved Eastwood and Norwood stores. The only question is which one to hit first.

Eastwood, Norwood & Keswick

Runner-up: Port Elliot Bakery

A bona fide SA institution that has been turning out baked goods since the 1980s, Port Elliot Bakery earns its reputation every single weekend. The glass cabinet is stacked with everything imaginable, but it’s the doughnut of the month, rolling through flavours like red velvet, Kinder Bueno, and Fruchoc, that keeps the loyal regulars making the drive down the coast.

Port Elliot

Best Neighbourhood Bar in Adelaide 2025

A glass of local vino, a crafted cocktail, or the easy hum of your favourite haunt.

Winner: East End Cellars

Something of a neighbourhood institution by now, East End Cellars is one of Australia’s top wine traders, connecting wine-obsessed Adelaideans with the best emerging local makers and bottles from around the globe. The tasting room-meets-bottleshop stocks over 15,000 bottles, and while dropping in for a glass is always an option, the food is too good to skip. Come summer weekends, regular street parties fill Vardon Avenue with locals, plastic tables, sunset sips, and live music.

Adelaide

Runner-up: Pastel Wine Bar

Pastel’s wine list is tight and genuinely considered, the seasonal cocktails earn their place, and the food consistently outperforms what the room might suggest. Dishes like chargrilled octopus with taramasalata and smashed Szechuan cucumber reflect a kitchen that takes its cues from elsewhere without apologising for it.

North Adelaide

Best Region For a Weekend Escape in SA 2025

A close-to-home getaway with standout eats, scenic allure, and undeniable local character.

Winner: Adelaide Hills

Just 25 minutes from the CBD, the Adelaide Hills manages to feel worlds away: rolling green escarpment, cool-climate cellar doors, and the kind of unhurried dining that makes a two-night stay feel genuinely restorative. The food scene has matured considerably in recent years, anchored by Hardy’s Verandah at Mount Lofty House and Ondeen Farm, a meticulously restored 1851 homestead running exceptional degustation menus centred on local producers. Add the German-inspired village of Hahndorf, the trails through Cleland Conservation Park, and a string of boutique accommodation ranging from luxury estates to tucked-away farm stays, and the Hills make a compelling case for any weekend on the calendar.

Runner-up: Fleurieu Peninsula

Just over an hour south of Adelaide, the Fleurieu Peninsula packs a serious amount into a short drive: more than 140 wineries across four wine regions, rugged coastal cliffs, white-sand beaches, and surf towns like Port Willunga and Aldinga worth the trip on their own. The food culture here is deeply rooted in produce and place, with cellar doors doubling as destination restaurants and a food festival each August that draws visitors from across the country. Whether you’re after a long winery lunch or a quiet coastal walk, the Fleurieu delivers both without asking you to choose.

Best New Restaurant Opening in Adelaide 2025

The newcomer already winning hearts and setting the bar high.

Winner: Mensa

Elevated Italian in a room that earns its atmosphere: exposed brick, terrazzo floors, earthy textures, and a menu that takes the classics somewhere more considered. Think pasta fritta with nduja, honey, and mascarpone; pappardelle with rabbit and green olives; and a 200-day grain-fed Angus porterhouse that means business. Save room for the cannolo alla Siciliana, filled with sweet ricotta, cedro citrus, and either pistachio or chocolate — it’s as close to a perfect finish as Adelaide’s 2025 restaurant scene has produced.

Kent Town

Runner-up: Tarantino’s

From the team behind Anchovy Bandit and La Louisiane, Tarantino’s brings bold New York Italian energy to Adelaide’s East End: house-made pasta, flame-grilled meats, and a retro-inflected room that hums from the moment service starts. It’s quickly become one of the harder tables to land on a Friday night, which is its own kind of endorsement.

Adelaide

Best Coffee Spot in Adelaide 2025

From perfectly pulled espresso shots to artisan brews, the cafes that get it right every single time.

Winner: Yolk Cafe

Walkerville’s most-talked-about morning destination is airy, welcoming, and built around seriously good coffee. The brunch menu impresses across the board, but the matcha French toast has developed something of a cult following since day one. The coffee, brewed from frozen Veneziano beans, has collected its own awards independently of the Sitchu recognition, and the genuinely warm service rounds out what makes Yolk worth the trip north of the CBD.

Walkerville

Runner-up: Exchange Coffee

A fixture in the East End since 2013, Exchange has become known as one of the best coffee shops in the world — that’s no small thing for a compact Adelaide neighbourhood cafe. Market Lane beans anchor the house blend, joined by a rotating roster of locally roasted single origins available on the machine and to take home. The food menu has expanded considerably over the years, but it’s the coffee and the community that keep the regulars coming back.

Adelaide

Best Small Local Business in Adelaide 2025

Lifestyle, Beauty, Fashion, Wellness — the boutique and independent spots that bring personality, purpose and real community presence.

Winner: Extend Studio

Extend Studio has built a loyal following by making wellness feel genuinely approachable rather than intimidating. The studio brings together daily reformer Pilates classes for all levels, physiotherapy, and a range of health services under one roof, then adds a barista-made coffee on your first physio visit. The team treats movement and recovery as part of the same conversation, and that investment in each client’s progress is what keeps people coming back long after the first class.

Prospect

Runner-up: Etienne

Chic homewares store Etienne is the kind of place you walk into for one thing and leave with three others you didn’t know you needed. Cool neutrals meet pops of colour across woven baskets, ceramic vases, candle holders, and trinket bowls, stocked with names like Maison Balzac, Dinosaur Designs, Aesop, and In the Roundhouse.

Unley

Best Foodie Suburb in Adelaide 2025

The neighbourhoods that pack a serious punch, serving up big flavours from hidden cafes to local culinary gems.

Winner: Prospect

Prospect has been earning its foodie reputation for years, but 2025 felt like the moment it fully arrived. Prospect Road and the streets running off it cover every occasion: Bottega Bandito for the sando crowd, Frankly Bagels for a mid-morning bagel run, Rosemont Hall for an evening that stretches into something more. The suburb has a creative, independent energy that attracts operators who care deeply about what they put on the plate, and it shows in every visit.

Runner-up: Adelaide CBD

The CBD’s eating and drinking offer is anchored by two distinct corridors: Leigh Street’s concentrated run of neighbourhood restaurants and wine bars, and the East End’s Vardon Avenue strip, which drew serious new openings in 2025 including Mensa in Kent Town and Tarantino’s. Whether you’re after a quick lunch on Rundle Street or a long natural wine session into the evening, the city centre covers more occasions than any single suburb.

What Are the Sitchu Awards?

The inaugural Sitchu Awards set out to celebrate the places that shape the way we live, dine and play across South Australia, from the bakery that starts your morning just right to the neighbourhood bar that feels like a living room.

Here’s how it worked: nominations opened to Sitchu readers across SA, giving the community the chance to put forward the spots that truly matter to them. Sitchu’s editors then curated five finalists across each of the nine categories. Voting then re-opened, with thousands of reader votes determining the winners. The results are entirely reader-driven; no editorial panel, no paid placements.

FAQs About the Sitchu Awards SA 2025

Where should I go for coffee and pastries in Adelaide?

Yolk Cafe in Walkerville (Best Coffee Spot, Sitchu Awards 2025) takes the coffee seriously, and Jenny’s Bakery (Best Bakery, Sitchu Awards 2025) is the place for properly laminated pastries worth rerouting your morning for. For coffee and a sando in one stop, Bottega Bandito in Prospect covers both without compromise.

Where is the best place for a weekend getaway in SA?

The Adelaide Hills took out Best Region for a Weekend Escape in South Australia 2025, with the Fleurieu Peninsula as runner-up. Both are within an hour of Adelaide and offer strong food, wine, and nature credentials.

What is the best suburb for food in Adelaide?

Prospect won Best Foodie Suburb in Adelaide 2025, recognised for the quality and variety of its independent food and drink offering along Prospect Road. Adelaide CBD was the runner-up.

What are the best independent businesses to support in Adelaide?

Sitchu Awards were built entirely around independent operators — no chains, no franchises. Extend Studio (Best Small Local Business), Bottega Bandito (Best Deli) and Jenny’s Bakery (Best Bakery) are three of the strongest examples of Adelaide independents doing something a bigger operation simply couldn’t replicate.

What is the best new restaurant to open in Adelaide?

Mensa in Kent Town won Best New Restaurant Opening at the Sitchu Awards SA 2025. The Italian restaurant serves pasta fritta with nduja and mascarpone, pappardelle with rabbit and green olives, and a 200-day grain-fed Angus porterhouse, with the cannolo alla Siciliana as a standout finish. Runner-up Tarantino’s, from the team behind Anchovy Bandit and La Louisiane, brought New York Italian energy to the East End with house-made pasta and a strong room.

Writer

Lauren Thomas-Nehmy

10 July 2026

Lauren is an Adelaide-based storyteller with a keen eye for the city’s lifestyle scene. Before joining Sitchu as Adelaide Content Producer, she honed her craft at SALIFE Magazine, InDaily, and The Advertiser, covering a range of local stories and crafting scroll-stopping social content. Lauren thrives on discovering Adelaide’s best bites, sips, and experiences — but off the clock, you’ll find her soaking up the sun at the beach or plotting her next weekend escape, spritz or perfectly brewed coffee in hand.