Tag Archives: @Port Adelaide

Red Lime Shack, Adelaide – Deliciously Healthy

I have been regularly driving past the Red Lime Shack for a couple of years now and thinking I must try them out. Finally we got there, and I can promise it will not take as long to go back again!

The Red Lime Shack is a vegan cafe situated on St Vincent Street in Port Adelaide. It has been around for a few years now and has had accolades in the past with The Advertiser voting their veggie burger the best in the state in 2014.

Red Lime Shack
Red Lime Shack

The cafe itself has a very strong community feel to it. The furniture is a mismatched hodgepodge of comfy chairs and sofas, with some areas with tables for food, but others for relaxing with a coffee. There are also tables outside for when the weather is nice or if you have your doggy friend with you.  There are many causes being promoted on the counters and surrounds, with paintings and other items for sale from local artists. The walls are covered in posters promoting local events or events that will appeal to the vegan community.

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Red Lime Shack
Red Lime Shack
Red Lime Shack
Comfy seats inside, other seating outside.
Comfy seats inside, other seating outside.

My favourite part of the cafe was a free book exchange. Customers are free to swap any books they like from the shelves with ones they have finished reading. There looked to be a decent selection of books on the shelves just waiting to be picked up. Next to the shelves was also a small table to cater for children with some colouring items and toys. Overall, there is a great atmosphere at the Red Lime Shack and I felt immediately comfortable and relaxed.

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Book Exchange
Kids corner
Kids corner

We had called in for lunch. I myself am not vegetarian, but my dining companion was. The menu is actually vegan, but had a great range of items. Red Lime Shack is a breakfast/lunch/coffee venue, so they serve an all day breakfast menu. We chose to have the fruit salad from the breakfast menu but without banana, and this was no problem at all. Of course we also had to try the award winning burger – this one was a pecan, sweet potato and maple patty with fresh salad, onion jam, mustard and tahini mayo. There was also the option of a gluten free bun, but we went with the standard. This was washed down with a BerryRipe fruit smoothly.

Fruit Salad
Fruit Salad
BerryRipe Fruit Smoothie
BerryRipe Fruit Smoothie
Veggie Burger
Veggie Burger
Some of the pies for dessert.
Some of the pies for dessert.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s hard to say much about a fruit salad, but this one was fresh and plentiful for the AUD$9 we paid for it. The burger for AUD$11 was delicious, not at all dry like some veggie burgers I have tried in the past, and with a great mix of flavours. The only bad part was that it was so filling we  had to forgo the signature raw lime pie for dessert.

We also did not get a chance to try the organic coffees, but will be back to do so. There is a frequent customer offer with coffee, once you buy seven, the eighth cup is free. Another menu item at the Red Lime Shack is a Suspended Coffee. As a customer I can purchase one, but it is held to be served to a local disadvantaged community member at a future date. Just another way the local community is being supported by this great cafe.

Overall a great, economical place to grab a quick lunch or breakfast in Port Adelaide, to have a business meeting or to meet friends for a coffee. The food may be vegan, but it is tasty and you will not even notice the missing ingredients. Their menu can be found on the website here to get you drooling before you arrive and remember to tell them Simon from Ourworldinreview sent you!

Red  Lime Shack Rating: 1-10 (1=very poor, 10 = excellent)

Decor = 8
Atmosphere = 8
Service = 8
Price = 9
Food = 8

Overall = 8

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El Greco, Port Adelaide

If you are like me, after a long week at work and Friday comes around you just can’t be bothered cooking. So this week, when Friday rolled around and I suggested that we go out for dinner.

One of the best things about living in Adelaide is that our options to dine are plentiful, so we decided to go somewhere we hadn’t been before. The only other conditions that we set, was that it had to be casual, easy and someplace local. That way we didn’t have to worry about our travel distance. With this in mind we headed to Port Adelaide to try El Greco for some of their wood oven pizza, which I have heard about from some work colleagues.

Wood Oven
Wood Oven

Over the past ten years, historical Port Adelaide has been trying to recapture its commercial glories of the past. This promotion of its historic significance by the Port Adelaide Enfield Council, has encouraged many new businesses to take up residence in the many empty buildings. El Greco, is one of those relatively new businesses that is calling Port Adelaide its home.

El Greco is situated at the lighthouse wharf end of Commercial Rd, near two of Port Adelaide’s more popular pubs the Lighthouse Inn and the First Commercial Inn. When you first walk up to the restaurant, it looks more like a fast food outlet. They have pictures of their popular dishes attached to the windows. A Golden North ice cream fridge is located at the front of store, for those weekend visitors on their way to or from the dolphin cruise berths. From the exterior, you wouldn’t class El Greco as a fine dining restaurant. It is more of a casual dining experience with some indoor and al fresco table placements.

Being a cooler winter evening we decided to sit inside, away from the front doors and the sudden bursts of cold air as other patrons entered. The interior decor of the restaurant is comfortable, but mismatched. They have an unusual interior design as they have divided the interior of the restaurant into two areas. One half, has leather style seats that you would find in many fine dining restaurants and the other side, which we are sitting in, was suited to a more casual dining area with wooden seats. Another feature of El Greco is they also cater for takeaway and home delivery customers. So in my honest opinion, I believe they just don’t know what type of restaurant they want to be. A fine dining restaurant, a casual restaurant or a takeaway delivery store.

Leather seats

Being still fairly early, we decided we wouldn’t have a huge meal, instead opting for some garlic bread with tzatziki, and one of their gourmet 12″ wood oven pizzas, the Zorba. The Zorba is a tomato based pizza with, cheese, lamb yiros meat, onions, fresh tomatoes, oregano, garlic, grilled capsicum and feta, topped with tzatziki sauce.

The garlic bread arrives pretty quickly with three large slices of fresh crusted bread lavished in garlic butter and flakes of parsley leaf. In the middle of the plate is also a bowl of homemade tzatziki, that has a smooth creamy texture full of flavour.

Garlic Bread
Garlic Bread

Quite happy with the garlic bread, it isn’t too long before our wood oven pizza arrives and it is visual treat, it is lavishly topped with fresh tomato slices, large chunks of yiros meat and full dollops of tzatziki sauce. The aroma given off is mouth-watering. The pizza base is well made with that thin crust that crunches with every bite. The El Greco’s Zorba is a wonderful pizza, cooked perfectly in their classic wood oven.

The Zorba
The Zorba

El Greco’s menu is not large, they have a good variety of traditional and gourmet pizzas with prices between AUD$13 and AUD$22, they also have a small selection of pasta dishes and schnitzels also between AUD$15 and AUD$22. Their wine selection is pretty standard with a few red and white choices that are available for you by the glass or the bottle. So overall you get a nice meal at a good price, which is all you can ask for really, when you want a quick meal.

As I have mentioned above, we did go to the restaurant fairly early into their service, so the atmosphere was at its infancy for the night, so my rating might be a bit low. I did notice that on Sunday, they do have live Bouzouki music playing. So I would recommend going on a Sunday to have that traditional Greek experience. The service provided was also good, with the staff being very attentive to our needs. This may have been because we were really the only customers dining in at the time, so it was probably not a stretch to keep us well serviced.

So if you are a visitor to Adelaide and would like to make the trip to Port Adelaide and try El Greco, the best way to get there from the city centre is to catch the public train service to Outer Harbor. Get off about 20 minutes later at Port Adelaide and make your way down commercial road towards the red lighthouse, approximately a 7 minute walk.

 Rating: 1-10 (1=very poor, 10 = excellent)

Decor = 6
Atmosphere = 6
Service = 8
Price = 9
Food = 8

Overall = 7

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