Down the back of a nondescript carpark on North Adelaide’s Melbourne Street (look for the sandwich boards on the footpath), E for Ethel is an impressive café serving above-par vegetarian selections (add bacon if you must). The carpark roof keeps things shady – and Ethel herself isn’t exactly over-lit. But once your eyes adjust, you’ll see a brick-floored, white-walled room dotted with timber tables and hung with local art. Toddlers wrestle with highchairs; elderly North Adelaideans twiddle with phones; 20-something staffers hum JJJ hits. Melbourne Street isn’t very ‘Melbourne’: no trams, no hipsters, no craft-beer breweries – more antique shops than anything else. But E for Ethel does a decent impersonation of a modern Australian café that would be at home in any city.
