Street ADL’s Jock Zonfrillo talks 2015 WOMADelaide restaurant

A whirlwind, world-flavoured adventure is coming for your tastebuds at WOMADelaide this year, with Jock Zonfrillo launching an intense Street ADL restaurant in the grounds of Botanic Park. Street In The Park, as the restaurant will be known, is a sit-down dining experience never before attempted at the festival.

“They approached us with an idea about Taste the World,” Zonfrillo tells The Adelaide Review, “and as we do different slants on street food from around the world here anyway, it fit into that idea.” To tackle the 150-seat venue, Zonfrillo will be closing fine dining restaurant Orana and taking the entire team to Botanic Park for sixteen lunch and dinner sessions across the four days. “We’re looking at it as a really fun thing to do,” says Zonfrillo, “and we want to get into it properly, so we want to use the key staff in our business to do it. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”

The menu plan for the long weekend will take inspiration from the Taste the World program at WOMAD, and the artists themselves. Zonfrillo explains that the acts are coming to Adelaide from 28 different countries, and each one of these nations will be reflected in a dish. “We’re going to look at that country and see what their popular type of street food is and then do a refined version of that,” he says.

Although creating unique dishes drawing on the traditions of 28 countries may seem an immense task, Zonfrillo is looking forward to the challenge. “Anything that people would look at as a concern is probably more of a challenge to me. That [difficult dish] will be the exciting one. The ones that end up challenging you are the ones that end up being the best, really.”

Besides, he says: “After Nomad Chef, [in which] I’d go away for two or three weeks in the country, then create brand new dishes on the day that I arrive back, coming up with some new dishes for this will be good fun – and I’ve got a couple of months’ lead time.”

Street In The Park is a ticketed restaurant, with $35 reserving you a seat and able to be redeemed for menu items. So, for example, that $35 can be used to purchase a $20 dish and $15 worth of drinks. Dishes, Zonfrillo hints, will be entree-to-main sized and range in price from approximately $20 to $30 each. The hope is that groups will gather at the long, Street ADL-style tables and share a menu selection.

The pricing system will ensure people get the most for their money. Zonfrillo sees no reason for festival dining to be lower quality for higher prices. “We did Cheesefest last year as a way to dip our toe in the water, and people loved it and enjoyed the food – it’s great quality and really reasonably priced,” he says.

“I find a lot of festival food is really… they’re in to gouge as much money as they can: they buy cheap food and sell it at a premium price. We’re going in with exactly the same quality as we sell here at Street, and with the same price point.” The bar will be featuring a strong local line up, with wines from Yalumba, beer from Coopers and cider from Hills, who will next week be celebrating their fifth birthday.

After the event, can punters expect to see a few WOMAD favourites pop up on the regular menu at Street ADL? “Potentially, yeah!” enthuses Zonfrillo. “We take inspiration from street food all over the world and give it our slant, our Australian spin, when it gets here. That’s what we do, so if there’s a way that we can do it and still balance the dishes with the native ingredients that we like to use, then definitely.”

Tickets to Street In The Park can be purchased online now.

Orana will reopen for business as usual on Tuesday, March 10.

Photograph by Andreas Heuer