It can be really difficult sometimes to find places to eat when you travel if you have particular dietary requirements. Here’s how it went for me, eating vegan in the Barossa Valley.
As a plant-based eater, appropriate food can often be hit and miss and more than once I’ve had nothing more than a big bowl of chips on offer while those around me eat delicious meals.
Sometimes finding a place to eat is such hard work that it becomes easier to not eat out but just visit the supermarket for something basic.
This defeats the point of travelling when food is often such a huge part of the experience. On my recent trip, I made a point of looking for the best places that offered vegan food to share with you.
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TL;DR? Here's the outline
Vegan in the Barossa Valley
While I personally look for vegan food for myself, places that serve vegan food are also more likely to have options for those people who instead require gluten or dairy-free options.
That means this list will also be useful to vegetarians and those with other dietary needs too.
Four Seasons of Nosh
I was excited to eat here! It’s been catching my eye during recent trips and when it came up in my searches for vegan food I knew I had to have breakfast here.
Four Seasons of Nosh is located right on the Main Street of Tanunda in a lovely old building that used to be a flour mill and is one of the oldest remaining in town.
The cafe is a hodge-podge of little rooms and nooks, furnished with comfortable couches, retro tables, crocheted throw rugs, fairy lights, and cozy everything!
Nosh serves all-day breakfast and all-day lunch, so it’s a great place to stop in the early part of the day. Its opening hours reflect this, as they are open from 9 am to 3 pm. I was coming here for their Vegan Big Breakfast!
I was so looking forward to this take on that oh-so-common option filled with meat.
The vegan version had everything you would expect – potato, mushroom, tomato, spinach, avocado, delicious toast and some of the best homemade baked beans I’ve tried. To be fair, I’m not a huge fan of baked beans, but these were good.
There are plenty more vegan options here too. On the menu, you will find standard offerings such as a vegan burger and some smashed avo.
While the options in the display case change over time, if I hadn’t decided on the Big Breakfast before I came, I probably would have been tempted by the vegan croissant or the cauliflower and leek pie!
There were also plenty of sweets – at least five different options including slices and a delicious-looking carrot cake. They offered soy, oat, almond and lactose-free milk. I went with a chai tea with oat milk, and it was also very good (and huge! Three cups at least).
it’s not just vegan food here though, and you can be assured you can bring your meat eater here and they will be happy too. My husband enjoyed a traditional big breakfast too.
Barossa Valley Chocolate Company
A chocolate place is not normally somewhere I would check out – I have been disappointed on more than one occasion before – but these guys do have some vegan chocolate options.
All their dark chocolate is vegan, so it’s just a matter of which “flavours” are added, but most of them are vegan too.
I chose dark chocolate with red licorice, but they also had some with pretzels, honeycomb (if you eat honey), peanut brittle – and of course plenty with no extra flavours at all.
There is a cafe on-site at the Barossa Valley Chocolate Company too. I didn’t get a chance to eat there but I did check out their menu and saw that they had at least one vegan option for lunch.
There probably would have been more options too, but there was no one there for me to ask during my visit.
On the way into the building there is a little ice cream stall with some delicious looking ice cream options.
For vegans there was something a little different to the usual lemon or raspberry sorbet – there was a vegan chocolate sorbet that looked really rich and decadent.
Harvest Kitchen
Oh my goodness, we booked here for dinner on a Saturday night and it was amazing. Saturday night is the only time they are open for dinner, but they are open for lunch seven days a week.
They are located a little outside of Tanunda in a beautiful spot on a rise with views over the vineyards and are clearly very popular as there was not a spare table to be seen, so if you want to go, I suggest booking in advance.
On the weekends the only options are their “Feed Me” menus. Basically, this means you choose one of two options.
The first is “Feed Me Like A Barossan” where you tell the staff about any dietary requirements or allergies and let them bring dish after dish of incredible food to the table.
The second option is the “Feed Me Eden” where you choose a range of dishes from a limited menu.
We went with the first option, and still, I was able to have vegan options and my husband had non-vegan. I was concerned beforehand that with only two of us, we might both have to have vegan, so it was great to see this wasn’t the case.
We ended up having eight different dishes each. The first six were vegan and we shared, but for the final two courses, we were given different options.
The food was interesting and delicious – even something as simple as hommus was somehow made differently and was so creamy and tasty.
Corn ribs were an interesting take on pork ribs with a delicious spicy sauce. I was totally intrigued by the teeny popcorn on the heirloom carrot course – how do they make it only the size of a corn kernel when popped?
Our final course was crispy chicken/crispy cauliflower, and by then we were so full we could barely move.
We went home in a food coma, completely satisfied and for once I didn’t feel like I missed out or was having a second-class meal by choosing the vegan option.
Barossa Siam
Barossa Siam is a Thai restaurant located in Angaston. Its name came up when I searched for vegan food in the Barossa Valley. It’s no surprise because Asian restaurants tend to have vegan options naturally.
After a day of wine tasting, we were looking for an early dinner before going back to our accommodation and Barossa Siam opens at 5 pm so that made it a good option.
The menu was a little disappointing in that it did not point out any of the vegan options (or vegetarian, gluten-free etc.) so I had to get the waiter to go through the options for me.
About half of the main meals could be made vegan, and I ended up going with Pad King Moo-Gai. This dish is pretty much stir-fried vegetables and tofu with a ginger base.
I found this – and my husband’s food – to be a very Australian style of Thai. It was solid, good food, but nothing special or spectacular.
I’d recommend this restaurant if you want something basic – they do a vegan Pad Thai too – but if you are looking for something fancy, this is not the place.
They offer takeaway too, and we noticed many more takeaway orders than dine-in, and it appears to be a local takeaway favourite.
The Clubhouse
Located in Tanunda The Clubhouse serves pub meals in their bistro. We were looking for a quick and easy dinner and this fit the bill once I saw that there were two vegan options on the menu. The first option was pasta, but it included a lot of pumpkin.
Unfortunately, I don’t like this common ingredient, which is often found in vegan meals. So I went with the second option, schnitzel, choosing parmigiana over the plain version,
While we were waiting for our meals we were served bread rolls and butter. I asked for a non-dairy spread instead of butter, but they did not have any available. That’s not a huge issue for me.
The meal consisted of three vegan schnitzels with tomato paste and vegan cheese, with chips and a garden salad. Everything was good without being amazing.
For a basic pub meal, I would come back here again, but I have definitely had better “vegan chicken” products.
The serving was quite large, I would have been quite happy with two instead of three of the schnitzels, or perhaps dividing it in half and taking a doggy bag home.
There were no vegan desserts on the menu, but since I had tried to eat all of my main meal, I was not interested in having one anyway.
If I were, I would have asked if they had any options – many places seem to have something that is not listed.
Steins Taphouse
This is another pub located in the Provenance Barossa Precinct. It has more of a “front bar” feel to it, with a pool table and benches to eat at. They have a great mural on one wall and lots of beer memorabilia decorating the rest of the room.
They are known for having many of the local Barossa beers available all in one place. We hadn’t planned to eat here (see below!), but saw a vegan burger on the menu and decided to give it a go.
The burger itself was actually delicious, but the service was terrible. I’m hoping they were having a bad day and it’s not always like this, but it took about 45 minutes to get our meals, and it was only moderately busy.
Unfortunately, I could tell straight away that my burger had normal cheese on it so I had to send it back to get remade, and that meant an even longer wait.
My husband got a pizza made with local mettwurst, and that was also delicious. This seems to be a good place to get a really tasty meal – but perhaps not if you are in a rush.
The Table
In Lyndoch, we stopped into The Table for lunch on our way home. This is a popular cafe and wine bar right on the main street. They have a lot of inside and outside seating, and almost every seat was taken.
There were a few vegan or vegan options on the menu which was nice to see as it’s not a huge menu. It was also nice to see a few different meals that I hadn’t seen in the last few days.
There was a mushroom stack that sounded good, and a couple of plates of pasta too, Of course, there was also a vegan burger, and standard sides such as chips, salad and marinated olives.
I chose to have their Summer Spaghetti. This has a tomato-based sauce with rocket, chilli, garlic and pine nuts. It was light and fresh, with just the right amount of chilli to give it a bit of a kick without it being overpowering.
The only downside was that perhaps it was a little overpriced, but still, I think I would likely order the same thing again on a future visit.
Barossa Valley Ice Cream Company
You are not going to find an actual shop for the Barossa Valley Ice Cream Company, but you will find their products all over the place. There is often a little freezer tucked in the corners of wineries and breweries, restaurants and cafes.
There is a huge selection in the Co-Op (the main Foodland supermarket in Nuriootpa). You will also find them on Saturday mornings at the Barossa Valley Farmers Markets in Angaston.
These guys have plenty of delicious ice cream flavours for the non-vegans, but you will also find at least three flavours for vegans too.
There is a Lemon sorbet, a Lemon and strawberry sorbet and a Blood Orange sorbet. From time to time they also produce other flavours too.
You can buy them in small single-serve tubs, or if you are really keen, you can pick up a 5-litre container to take home.
The list on their website includes a few more sorbets that are likely vegan too, such as Gin & Lime or Grenache & Blackberry – but you would need to check the ingredients a little more closely to be sure.
Ember Pizza
I’m adding this one as an honourable mention because we didn’t actually get to eat here. We were there at lunchtime on a Saturday, only to discover they were completely booked out. Or at least they were completely booked out inside.
There is plenty of outside seating, but it was very cold the day we were there and our options were to wait an hour to sit inside or go somewhere else. We ended up going next door to Steins Taphouse,
Ember Pizza obviously does pizza, and what drew me too it was the option of vegan cheese clearly stated on their menu outside the door.
The pizza looked delicious too, so this is going to be one of my top options next time I am in the Barossa.
Forage Supply Co
This is another one I want to mention but did not get a chance to try. These guys have a vegan food van, and the food looks absolutely delicious.
The problem is they don’t just set up and serve their food anywhere, but rather they only seem to go to markets, events, festivals etc.
If you do happen to be in the Barossa (I’ve also seen them at events in Adelaide, such as the Fringe) and see them listed at an event, then pop in to get some great food.
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