Adelaide's favourite local bakeries

Goodwood Road is a long way from the Champs Elysées, but Boulangerie 113 does a mighty fine impersonation of a Parisian dough-den. It’s an open-fronted affair, with a scatter of footpath tables and a counter crammed with buttery croissants, elegantly stuffed sourdough baguettes and myriad tarts, pastries, loaves and buns. The coffee is good to go, too, and savvy marketing sees regular themed baked goods entering the fray, from ghoul biscuits at Halloween to star-shaped Christmas tarts.

In this age of pop-ups and food vans, it’s hard to believe that this modest little North Adelaide bakery has been putting buns in the oven for around 130 years. The Perrymans themselves have moved on, but the new owners certainly haven’t dropped the dough. In fact, with the hipster reverence for tradition infusing Adelaide, old Perryman’s is exuding new cool. Expect excellent oven stuff, from pepper-steak pies and spinach-and-cheese rolls to German-influenced sweet treats like Kitchener buns, streusel cakes and custard Berliners.

Glenelg beach itself is a gorgeous promenade along the waterfront, but culturally Glenelg is an underwhelming mix of predictable coffee shops, fish-and-chippers and sunburnt backpackers. Remy and Violette, a hip little patisserie, injects some much-needed Euro cool. Swing by for impressive croissants, croque monsieurs and coffee: three ‘c’s that can make even the most arduous of mornings seem doable.

Out the back of the successful Stirling Hotel in the Adelaide Hills – just a 12-minute dash up the freeway from the city – is this zippy little patisserie, serving excellent house-made pastries, baguettes and pies. The fact that the patisserie counter occupies a corner of the best bottle shop in the Hills is further enticement. But finish your lemon curd petitfour, your almond croissant and your double-shot flat white before you get stuck into the local sauv blanc. Also on offer are wonderful takeaway quiches, chunky loaves and crunchy French sticks to fuel the folks at home.

Got an eye for a pie? Need to fill a niche with a quiche? Bakery On O’Connell will satisfy, 24 hours a day. Looking rather demure from the outside, inside this place thrums with dozens of customers and almost as many staff, keeping the cabinets stocked with sausage rolls, pies, pasties and quiches of all denominations. On the sweet side of the ledger are fruit pies, éclairs, tarts and biscuits aplenty. But the real reason you’re here at 3am is to experience a ‘pie floater’ – a meat pie adrift in a bowl of green pea soup, smothered with tomato sauce. Magic!