Half & Hafu — Restaurant in Adelaide

What a fantastic find! Been meaning to try this place for ages so I'm really glad to finally be able to. The place was quite small but luckily being a Sunday night there were still tables available despite not booking prior.

Staff were really friendly and attentive. A generous selection of Thai and Japanese food on offer. We ordered salmon rolls, mushroom karaage, miso eggplant, sashimi, prawn red curry and crispy pork with Chinese broccoli.

The mushroom karaage was juicy and moreish. Two things that would have made it absolutely perfect are probably seasoned flour/batter and a bit more mayonnaise to go with it. Having said that, it was one of our favourites of the night so it is very good as it is.

Miso eggplant (nasu dengaku) was absolutely heavenly, I wish I could have that on tap every day! Delicious and very well balanced, perfect with steaming hot rice. The fluffy and flavourful morsels of eggplant were an absolute delight. This was my personal favourite, although I'd have to say the mushroom tempura and sashimi were both pretty good!

The sashimi selection was also fantastic. Very fresh and worth what you pay for. I only wish for more stomach space so that I can gobble up more of it. The fish slices were the perfect bite, not too thin, not too thick, just perfect. Very fresh and of good quality. I especially loved the addition of oysters, scampi and scallops. Made the whole dish really come together nicely.

The red prawn curry and crispy pork with Chinese broccoli paled in comparison to the others, however they were still decent. The curry was rather stock standard, yummy regardless. The pork belly pieces were fatty and crispy, and the Chinese broccoli was also perfectly cooked. Only gripe was that the sauce was a tad bit too salty so it took away from what otherwise would have an amazing dish.

We were there in the evening so parking wasn't an issue, however I can imagine it being something to consider during peak hours.

All in all a very good experience and I will definitely return to try more of their...

Half and Haifu is a little known, local gem in St. Morris. This restaurant is to be congratulated for high quality food and exceptional service. Recently I had a birthday lunch function for 23 people in their private room – adjacent to the main dining room. With it’s separate entrance, the private room was ideal for guests to mingle before lunch and was perfect for speeches. There are very few small local restaurants that offer a small private room for family functions – so this is a winner.

The owner, M was extremely friendly and helpful during the function planning, which included face to face meetings to discuss menu options, design table /layout and prior access to drop off balloons, etc. Follow-up communication via email and phone was timely and clear. The restaurant was also happy for me to bring in my own choice of champagne and wine (and pay corkage)

As regular diners at Half and Haifu, we know the food is consistently excellent and they lived up to expectations for my function. Everyone was impressed with the food, including two of my guests have lived in Japan. They commented the Agadashi tofu, eggplant and terryiaki chicken was highly authentic and reminded them of the food they’d eaten in Japan.

The service was also excellent, but not intrusive. The serving staff (especially P) was super friendly and couldn’t do enough to ensure the lunch was a success. Staff were available during the function to ask questions and clarify any issues.

I highly recommend Half and Haifu especially if you’re thinking of a small private function in a local restaurant, …this is THE ...

Owner asked me to justify my rating so here goes.

Had a bit of a misadventure here. Of all the food we ordered that day, the Unagi garlic fried rice was really good as was the tempura prawn roll.

On to the negatives.

We originally ordered ramen but was told it had run out after the order was taken. This was 6pm on a Sunday, we were probably one of the first customers for the dinner session and they had already run out? Minor issue, decided to replace with other items.

One of our order was mixed up, where we were served tempura prawns rather than the roll. I clearly pointed to the item on the menu when my order was being taken. To their credit they replaced the item with the correct order, but I did sense some minor hesitation.

The dragon roll (soft shell crab) was quite underwhelming. The oyako don was not quite what we were expecting. Made with breaded fried chicken rather than the more authentic sauteed chicken and brothy version.

Worse of all was when we were served the sukiyaki we noticed it was missing the udon. No communication whatsoever from the waitresses. When we asked we were told they had run out of udon. Had we not asked I suspect they would have just conveniently forgotten about it. We asked for a replacement noodle and heard nothing back for quite some time, until we asked again and was served with some soba...