What a great idea to have a roof top bar on top of an iconic building such as 2 King William Street. Customers are escorted from the ground floor and have to take two lifts to reach the venue. Once upstairs, you’re treated to spectacular views across the city. With a restaurant, outdoor bar and private booths, this place is perfect almost any sort of gathering.
There are 2 menus; a bar menu and a restaurant menu. The bar menu consists of tapas style dishes, salads, toasted rolls and pizzas. The restaurant menu is also designed for sharing with a selection of small, medium and large plates, and of course, there are steaks.
There are elements of the restaurant which are very typical of new establishments these days. The white tiling, the low hanging light fittings, the exposed ceilings and the prominent use of timber are so commonly seen. Of course, the major attraction with this place are the views across the city.
I thought this was the best view from the balcony. Most of the other vantage points had buildings in the way.
As a snack, I had the 2KW Pork Melt which contained roasted porchetta, black forest ham, Swiss cheese and New York pickles. The toasted roll also came with a side of fries.
For a gourmet upmarket toastie, it was pretty good. The sourness of the pickles really complemented the flavourful melted Swiss cheese. The roll was nice and crusty, and it wasn’t a bad size. The fries were nice and crunchy, and adequately salted.
The staff were very friendly and the service was pretty good. The atmosphere was vibrant, but you expect that for a bar. The pricing is a little dearer than most places with my snack costing me $20. Was it worth the money? Probably not, but considering $4.5 million was invested in developing the place, it’s no surprise everything is a little more expensive.
Is this a unique place in Adelaide? Yes.
Will this place be the next trendy place to be seen? Absolutely.
I like this place so much, I’m looking forward to my next visit.
WHERE: 2 King William St, Adelaide
ADELAIDE FOOD CENTRAL 
Just tried to visit 2KW. Since I work in a creative industry, it’s expected that I dress casually, often including jeans and shorts, though always smart jeans and shorts. I was in the company of a lawyer, dressed as if she might have been going to court at a moment’s notice. Yet for the first time in the ten years plus that I’ve been living in Adelaide (previously: London, Edinburgh, Sydney) I was turned away for being inappropriately dressed. No suggestion was made for what I should be wearing, but a man who arrived a few moments later was also turned away, apparently for wearing shorts. In Adelaide, in summer. Once again, he was in the company of a smartly dressed woman.
The impression I’m left with is that the place is run by people from interstate who simply have no understanding of the city they’re in. A similar place in Sydney might be able to get away with turning away anyone who isn’t in standard business clothing, but I very much hope that proves unworkable here. 2KW is never going to be a playground for the people in a few high-end corporate offices – Adelaide’s CBD is far less grey and homogenised than that – and clearly the staff need to raise the bar very quickly indeed when it comes to working out who their customers are.
Despite the obvious affectations of the owners, and the unfriendliness of their staff, 2KW is still – essentially – a bar. It’s certainly not as if I was trying to gain access to an establishment known only for fine dining, in which case, obviously enough, I would have gone home and changed first. To add insult to injury, their website announces that 2KW is a bar that serves both Heineken and Corona, two beers which are every bit as crass and tasteless as the tinnies of VB flooding Hindley Street, but which gain some sort of kudos by being imported. It’s that sort of place: pretentious and shallow. God only knows how they’ll cope with the hurly burly of the Festival and the Fringe.
Contrary to an idea expressed elsewhere that everyone should go to 2KW at least once, I’d suggest that you’ll be doing Adelaide a very big favour if you don’t go at all.