Foodie road trip in Tasmania
Tassie may once have been seen as a sleepy backwater, but the island’s creative food scene now attracts chefs and tourists keen to try charcoal and blackcurrant cordial, dived-to-order sea urchins and sheep-whey vodka
Looking for places to eat in Tasmania? Read about our foodie road trip in Tasmania, including places to stay and eat in Hobart, Tasmania's riverside capital.
It might be the gateway to Antarctica, but Hobart is hotter than Hades. Not in meteorological terms, of course – Tasmania, Australia’s southernmost state, is closer to Shetland in temperature than Sicily, but its culinary scene is sizzling. Whispers of the island’s lotus-eater pace of life and bountiful natural larder – from oysters and abalone plucked straight from the sea to wagyu beef and Cape Grim rainwater so clean they bottle it – has caused a stampede of hotshot chefs moving over from the mainland (read about Sarah Glover below).
There’s plenty of homegrown Tasmanian talent too. This is an island of innovators and oddballs who love nothing more than to shake things up a little. Got some sheep? Lets make vodka from the sheep’s cheese whey. Whisky? Why not knock up a still in the barn and use a tumble dryer as a malting machine?
Campfire cook up with Sarah Glover
Instagram favourite Sarah Glover swapped life as a pastry chef in Sydney and New York to rediscover her culinary roots – and became a poster girl for outdoor cooking along the way – back on her home turf of Tasmania (her new cookbook, WILD, a collaboration with photographer Luisa Brimble, is part recipe collection, part adventure handbook).
Where to eat and drink in Hobart, Tasmania
Faro at Mona (Museum of Old and New Art)
Tasmania’s big-guns-blazing attraction is the creation of one man’s whimsy. David Walsh’s phenomenal art collection is wonderfully bonkers, irreverent and also home to one of the hottest tables in town, Faro (there’s a winery, Moorilla, next door for post-culture-vulture tastings; moorilla.com.au).
Faro, the tapas bar and restaurant, is all brushed concrete, black tiles and huge picture windows looking out over the water. Sip a Night is Day, a black mocktail made with active charcoal, tonic water and homemade blackcurrant cordial, before a lunch of tender chargrilled octopus on a bed of deliciously smoky aubergine purée and punchy, pungent pickles.
Gourmania food tour
Over the past few years, Hobart has evolved into a hotbed of culinary innovation and the energy is palpable. A Gourmania food tour is a good way to get your gastronomic bearings and have a taste of the city.
Pigeon Whole Bakers
Pop in to the white marble-and-glass bakery, Pigeon Whole Bakers, for a sugary swirl of cardamom-laced carbs. A counter is laid with freshly assembled pastries, while bread loaves of all shapes and sizes (try the popular organic sourdough) spill out of wooden crates at the back.
Franklin – for industrial chic dining
Another Sydney stowaway is Analiese Gregory, who now heads up the kitchen at Hobart hotspot Franklin. All polished concrete, cowhides and diaphanous drapes, it has an industrial vibe. We start with raw albacore tuna with tomatillo and soy-cured egg yolk, gossamer-light yet rich. Next we tuck into raw Bruny Island wallaby with pickled mulberry, mushroom and fresh horseradish. The combination is ridiculously moreish. For dessert there’s feather-light whipped brown butter and salted caramel, sandwiched between wafer-thin crispy potato rectangles. It looks brown and bland but tastes sweetly sensational.
Happy in her new home, Analiese admits: “I had real chef envy when I visited from Sydney. There’s such a great energy here.” And then there’s the produce – sweet sea urchins can be scooped from the seabed and be on the table by lunchtime.
Salamanca Market
Graze your way around the Saturday Salamanca Market to sample artisan leatherwood honey, Tasmanian truffle oil and salt (tastruffles.com.au) – and sheep-whey vodka. Knock back a thimble sized measure of the 12-month oaked vodka and savour its beautiful butterscotch sweetness.
Institut Polaire – for wine and martinis
With more cool white marble and grey leather, this bar has chilly class and shakes up icy Sud Polaire Antarctic dry martinis. Pulling up a bar stool, however, we're swayed by its micro-batch Domaine Simha wines: the Rani riesling has notes of wildflower honey, the 2015 chardonnay citrus, white peaches, apricots and a hint of vanilla.
Willing Bros – for wine
There’s now a slew of cool wine bars in Hobart, including bare-brick watering hole Willing Bros. Here you can sit at the marble counter and choose a bottle from the rack. 'Wine food' includes charcuterie served with homemade piccalilli and sourdough, marinated olives or plates of Tasmanian and European cheeses.
Ettie's – for speakeasy vibes with food
Ettie’s, a basement piano bar and bistro, for late-night night candlelit lounging. The European bistro-inspired menu focuses on Tasmanian produce. Start with Pacific oysters and country terrine with sherry prunes, before the likes of roasted duck ravioli, red wine and radicchio risotto with gorgonzola, and octopus, white beans and ‘nduja vinaigrette. Or, pop in for a glass of wine in the bottle-stacked wine room on the ground floor.
Fico - for a hip bistro
Tiny hipster eateries are springing up all over town. We can’t vouch for Fico as it was closed for refurbishment, but enough people rolled their eyes when we mentioned the pared-back net-bistro to make us believe the hype. The produce is all sourced from locals, with whom the owners are on friendly first-name terms – pigeons from Phil, turnips from Tony and calamari from Ross.
Dier Makr – for a tasting menu
Dier Makr is downright alchemy. Kobi Ruzicka and Sarah Fitzsimmons wing it out front, performing culinary and mixological acrobatics in their hip hangout.
The six-course tasting menu showcases unusual flavour combos. Perch at the counter and tuck into anchovies and lemon rind, a mouthful of intense oily saltiness with a sharp citrus edge. The mussels and turnip is extravagantly good, the baby turnips grilled, the larger turnips pickled and thinly sliced, and the fermented turnip paste giving the dish a pungent heat. All complemented by a tantalising, cloudy orange wine.
Places to eat and drink in Tasmania on a foodie road trip
Hartshorn Distillery and Grandvewe Farm
Ryan Hartshorn of Hartshorn Distillery, aka the Vodka Shepherd, has taken the family farm off on a top-knot-friendly tangent. Not content with making cheese, he bought a still and started experimenting. The result is an award-winning vodka, its distinctive black bottles all hand-painted. You can also visit the farm, Grandvewe Cheeses, 25 miles south of Hobart, for a cheese-tasting or cheese-making session. They make eight different types including Brebichon, a sheep’s-milk version of reblochon (nutty and sweet) and Sapphire Blue, which is salty and creamy, like roquefort.
Tasmania Whisky Trail
There’s more to Tasmanian wine these days than a cold-climate pinot. Along with cider (the island is known as the Apple Isle) and sheep-whey vodka, you can also down a dram or two on the Whisky Trail. The world woke up to Tasmanian whisky when Sullivans Cove French Oak won World’s Best Single Malt in 2014. Head out on a whisky-tasting tour with Brett Steel of Drink Tasmania (drinktasmania.com.au), through rolling farmland to bucolic Nant (nant.com.au), pioneering Old Kempton (oldkemptondistillery.com.au), Belgrove, and grand Shene Estate.
Shene Estate
Shene, a crumbling 19th-century estate, has been restored and given a new lease of life by David and Anne Kernke. In their smart timber distillery the couple make Irish-style triple-distilled whiskey and an award-winning gin, Poltergeist, infused with 12 native Tasmanian botanicals.
Belgrove Estate
Belgrove is as rustic as Shene is polished. Whisky-making maverick, Peter Bignell, is, Brett tells me, a creative genius. A sheep and arable farmer with a surplus of rye, he built his own copper still and started distilling in the old stables. An old tumble dryer in the yard is the malting machine. Black Rye, his take on Kahlúa, made with grappa, rye and coffee, is his biggest seller (for espresso martinis). Noma’s Rene Redzepi is a fan; when he created a pop-up in Sydney in 2016, he put Belgrove spirits on the menu. Surrounded by fields of barley, rye and wheat, it’s the ultimate paddockto-bottle set-up. “Or dirt to drink,” the whisky wizard says with a wry smile.
The Agrarian Kitchen cookery school
Tasmania’s first paddock-to-plate cookery school, meanwhile, is half an hour outside Hobart in the Derwent Valley. Rodney Dunn, one-time Sydney-based editor of Gourmet Traveller magazine, watched back-to-back box sets of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage before deciding to create an Tasmanian version. With his wife, Séverine, he founded The Agrarian Kitchen in 2008, a cookery school in a 19th-century schoolhouse on a farm in Lachlan. In 2017, he opened a light, bright eatery in nearby New Norfolk, celebrating local, seasonal and sustainable produce.
We pitch up at the cookery school and wander around the garden with Séverine. The herb garden is brimming with lemon balm, Mexican tarragon, rosemary, thyme, chamomile and mint; the orchard’s branches are heavy with fruit; 100 types of tomatoes are growing in the polytunnels; and chickens and Wessex Saddleback pigs roam the fields.
Tasmanian Seafood Seduction tour
The small boat chugs out of the harbour along the Derwent River to the D’Entrecasteaux Channel, separating Tasmania from Bruny Island. Freshly shucked oysters come thick and fast, followed by oysters poached in champagne on deck. Lee, the guide, scrambles into his wetsuit and dives off the boat. Clambering up the ladder, his bag bursting with spiny sea urchins and abalone, lunch is a smorgasbord of sweet, saltwater-laced seafood: sustainable, hyper-local, seafloor-to-fork dining. It’s devilishly good.
Hobart Tasmania hotels
Looking for places to stay in Tasmania? Here are some boutique hotels in the area
MACq 01
The glamorous new design hotel MACq 01 on Hobart’s harbour has architectural pizzazz and an imaginative concept: each of the 114 rooms is named after an extraordinary character in Tasmania’s colourful history (from Jørgen Jørgensen, king of Iceland turned Tasmanian convict, to Ma Dwyer, legendary landlady and madam of the local brothel) and guests can join complimentary door-to-door storytelling tours.
For the best deals on rooms at MACq 01, click here
Henry Jones Art Hotel
Wharf warehouse in style, this vision of slatted wood is in the same stable as the Henry Jones Art Hotel, also on the waterfront but set in an old jam-making factory.
For the best deals on rooms at Henry Jones Art Hotel, click here
How to get to Tasmania
Return flights from London Heathrow to Melbourne via Abu Dhabi start at £696 (etihad.com). Flights from Melbourne to Hobart start from $118 one way (virginaustralia.com). For more info see discovertasmania.com.au. Follow Lucy on Instagram and Twitter @lucygillmore.
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