Taste of Tasmania, 2011/2012

As I've mentioned before, I really enjoy the Taste of Tasmania. I can understand why some people don't like it but I love having a whole bunch of food and wine to choose from in the one place, as well as the music and social side of it. This year it changed a lot with the changes to the PW1 shed - the logistics of it are great - there's heaps more places to sit. I was a bit disappointed to find that there was a reduced choice of food this year due to the smaller amount of space available for stalls, however there were still lots of treats to be found!

J and I (and others!) shared a meaty platter from Tas Game & Gourmet. It was about $35 but great value for money, with plenty of scallops, abalone, venison, buffalo, goat, wallaby, cheese kransky squeezed onto the plate with salad, wedges and chutney.



Mum and I shared a few dishes on another night. First up was a premium platter from Meadowbank ($16). This was excellent, with a chicken and pistachio sausage, pork rillette, duck liver pate, air-dried beef, duck terrine, brie, bread, gherkins and pickled onions.



We also had a plate of Nepalese lamb curry from the Vanidols stall, along with one of each of their spring rolls and curry puffs. All delicious!



I enjoyed discovering the new Small Players cider range, which is made by Holm Oak Vineyards. They have ciders in sweet, dry and perry varieties; sweet was my favourite.



I introduced mum to the Tasmanian Chilli Beer Co's excellent raspberry sparkling drink.



On the last day I enjoyed some of the old favourite Taste dishes on the second-last day, when the crowds had died down. Waji's calamari:



And tempura mushrooms.



Nom!

Jam Jar Lounge, Battery Point

Happy new year!

Jam Jar Lounge is another Hampden Road cafe in a great building with lots of different rooms and a fantastic courtyard out the back, which is where we chose to sit on a recent sunny day.

I had the spatchcock with bread salad and labne. The spatchcock was perfectly cooked and delicious, but the salad didn't excite me too much.



One friend had the French toast with salted caramel and a lemon curd cream. The caramel was insanely good!



Another friend had a roast beef sandwich which looked and tasted spectacularly good, but sadly I forgot to photograph it.

Between Jam Jar, Environs and Jackman & McRoss, Hampden Road has a lot going for it in the cafe department!

Environs Cafe, Battery Point

Environs Cafe is a newcomer to Battery Point but I have a feeling that it will be around for a while - it's just that good. The food is fantastic, the menu is really interesting and it's very reasonably priced.

From the breakfast menu, the Cottage Green: almond-coated sardines, poached egg and rocket on a hash brown ($12.50). The hash brown is on the left and the sardines on the right - this is a pretty tasty light meal.



The savoury breakfast ($14.50) is enormous, and one of the best full breakfast-type plates I've ever tasted. It comes with scrambled eggs on a corn cake, and bacon, hash brown and tomato, topped with hollandaise sauce. The corn cake and scrambled eggs are the highlights! The picture below shows the dish ordered with their home-made sausage ($3.50 extra), which was nicely spicy.



The French toast with poached fruit, labne and pistachios ($12) is a winner for the days when something sweet is wanted.



The risotto ($13) is on the lunch menu and comes with roast vegetables, mushrooms, garlic and parmesan cheese. It was lovely and hearty.



I didn't try the chicken pasta ($15) but it looked fantastic - I plan to try it soon! It's pappardelle pasta with roast chicken, pumpkin and cashews and a garlic cream sauce.



Both the breakfast and lunch menus are an option all day, and there are also some antipasto dishes that I've yet to try. Definitely a new favourite place to eat!

Mo Mo Bubble Tea and Coffee House, Sandy Bay

I've written about the city Mo Mo store before and am a big fan of the place, but until last week I hadn't had a meal at their Sandy Bay store. Everything at this outlet is vegetarian and the menu is mostly made up of mock meat goodies.

To start with I tried one of my dining friend's green dumplings. These are relatively pricey compared to other dumplings on the menu, but very tasty.



I had the San Bei 'chicken', which has a sauce of soy sauce, rice wine and sesame oil. The sauce was quite tasty, although I was hoping for a more pronounced sesame flavour (I love sesame oil!). It was really filling, and the fake meat had a great texture.



A friend had the 'beef' ribs which came skewered on sugarcane. I tried one and it was very nice - the marinade had a lovely flavour and I enjoyed chewing on the sugarcane.



Another friend had the crispy 'chicken', and it was my favourite of the dishes. Crispy goodness!



Mo Mo Sandy Bay is a great place for dinner - the food is interesting and very reasonably priced. If you go there make sure you get bubble tea too!

Mai Ake Thai, North Hobart

Mai Ake Thai is on Elizabeth Street in North Hobart. It's a popular Thai restaurant that has been around for quite a while.

We started with the roti bread with peanut sauce. It was good value and a great start to the meal.



The chicken pad thai was fantastic, a great example of the dish.



The duck curry was a bit disappointing - the pieces of duck were chewy and gristly, and I'm pretty sure the menu said that there was lychee in the curry but we couldn't find any. Royal Thai definitely does a better red duck curry.



Still, overall it was a tasty dinner and we left feeling quite satisfied.

Pilgrim Coffee, Hobart CBD

Pilgrim Coffee is a new-ish addition to Argyle Street, opposite the hospital. The fitout has a very Melbourne vibe. I've been here twice, and on the first visit I grabbed a couple of macarons:



The one on the left was pistachio - it didn't have a strong pistachio flavour but the ganache was nice and rich and there was also a dollop of tasty jam (strawberry or raspberry?). The left-hand macaron was lemon or lime and wonderfully zesty, with two different ganaches in the middle.

On another visit we sampled a couple of rolls from the delicious-looking selection. I was a bit disappointed that they didn't have either the duck or pork belly rolls that I'd heard good things about, but found some tasty alternatives.

Lamb and lentil:



Chicken, avocado and cashew:



J and I shared these, and they were lovely. A little pricey but worth it - the quality of ingredients was clear.

We're not coffee drinkers but I've heard good things about their coffee!

Sapa Rose, Hobart CBD

Sapa Rose is a relatively new Vietnamese restaurant in the city. We don't have much in the way of Vietnamese here, so it's a great addition to the Hobart dining scene.

J and I shared two entrees and two mains. We started with the crispy duck skin with prawn. Fried duck skin - things don't get much tastier than that! The dipping sauce was lovely, too.



We also had the beef la lop - beef wrapped in betel leaves and grilled. Again, this was brilliant. The beef mix had a lovely and strong flavour of kaffir lime leaves.



For mains, we had the traditional curry chicken. It was wonderfully comforting on a cold, rainy night.



We also had the claypot rice which was topped with various meats, vegetables and a gooey fried egg.



I really enjoyed this meal - beautiful flavours and it was great value (the above plus steamed rice came to around $50). The service was a bit patchy, and mains took quite a long time to come, but it was worth it. I'll be back to try more of their dishes, including the phở which is only available at lunchtime.

Annapurna, Salamanca

Annapurna Indian Cuisine has two restaurants in Hobart, one in North Hobart and the other at Salamanca. I *love* Indian food and seem to end up at Indian restaurants pretty often (though this seems to be the first time that I've blogged about one!).

One of my favourite things to order that a couple of Hobart's Indian restaurants offer is the Thali plate. Annapurna's menu describes this as "An Indian style combination plate served on a big tray with an assortment of individual dishes with steamed rice and Indian bread."

There are three type of thali available here - I chose the special thali ($22.90) which came with a piece of tandoori chicken, butter chicken, lamb rogan josh, a vegetable curry, raita, naan bread, a papadum and rice. There is also a vegetarian thali and another that has seafood.



It was great, as usual. It's a huge amount of food - only order it if you are hungry! I once made the mistake of ordering a thali and mango lassi - all that food topped off with the thick, yoghurty drink left me in a bit of a food coma.

Annapurna's website.

Fish 349, North Hobart

Another visit to Fish 359, this time with my parents for a weekend lunch.

I had the fish and chips, and chose flathead with spicy dukkah from the fish options:


Mum had the basil & macadamia crusted salmon with spiced potatoes and tomato salsa, a lovely combination.

Dad also had flathead, grilled with olive mash, baby spinach and a capsicum pesto.

Raincheck Lounge, North Hobart

A recent brunch at Raincheck Lounge. I've had breakfast there quite a lot, but haven't really tried many of their non-breakfast items.
Despite that, I still ordered a breakfast-y dish! I had an omelette that came with sourdough and relish, and was incredibly filling.


My friend had the calamari salad, which looked wonderfully fresh.

Heart Foundation Gala Ball

J and I were lucky enough to score tickets ($200/head!) through his work for the Heart Foundation's annual gala ball at Wrest Point Casino in the last weekend on June. The theme of the night was 'Dreaming under the Southern Stars' so everything had a very Aussie feel to it, from the food to the decorations to the entertainment (James Blundell!). We dressed up in our finest clothes, and had a great time!

Before we were seated, canapés were served, though we didn't get to try any. The menu listed chermoula-spiced prawn skewers with soy dipping sauce, tempura vegetables with mint yoghurt, and sweet potato tartlets with wilted spinach and pecans.

The appetiser was a "Bushman's Platter", consisting of cured wallaby with Tasmanian berry chutney, gumleaf smoked atlantic salmon tartare, and sweet potato panna cotta with micro herb salad. The wallaby (hiding at the back-right of the pic below) was fantastic, a lovely flavour with a nicely chewy texture. The sweet potato panna cotta was a bit strange at first, but I ended up enjoying it.

Our entrée was consommé of roasted tomatoes with smoked chicken, fresh basil and savoury snow eggs. The soup itself was nice but the snow egg was very strange indeed! Reading the menu I'd had visions of a fantastical Peter Gilmore-style snow egg, but it was basically just a sweet, soft meringue. On its own it was far too sweet but I found that having a tiny bit in a spoonful of soup was not so bad tasting... but still odd!
We were also served a damper-like bread with butter.

Main courses were alternate service. I had the seared lemon myrtle ocean trout with pickled cucumber, steamed wild rice, light tomato and curry leaf sauce. The trout was sublime - I was impressed at how perfectly it was cooked considering how many people they were catering for. The other elements of the dish were fine.

J had the plum glazed pork ribs with herb crushed potato, red cabbage and port jus.

The table set up was quite nice.

Dessert was also alternate service. J had the wild rosella flower and coconut cream mousse, with wattle seed shortbread and orange pepper berry sauce.

I had a very lovely chocolate and wattle seed pudding with vanilla ice cream and rosella compote. A delicious end to the night!

After dessert we were offered tea and coffee, which came with casino-branded plain chocolates that were quite awful - they tasted like compound chocolate.

During the dinner we thoroughly enjoyed the wines from northern Tassie's Holm Oak Vineyard. I tried the sparkling rose, 2009 riesling, 2010 sauvignon blanc, 2009 pinot noir and the 2010 botrytis riesling, all of which were very drinkable indeed! I'll be looking out for their wines in future.

MONA Museum Cafe

J and I recently checked out the Museum of Old and New Art - a pretty incredible place. While we were there we had lunch at the museum cafe. It was busy the whole time we were there - they must have a pretty high turnover!
,
I had the pie, which was tasty with lovely pastry (a pie isn't good without nice pastry!) J had the eggs benedict muffin. The sauce looked a bit strange (not quite as strange as the photo makes it look) but it all tasted good. He was feeling hungry so also enjoyed a chicken wrap. Next time I'm there I'd like to check out the Wine Bar - the menu looked really interesting. And I'd also love to go to the Source restaurant sometime, perhaps for a special occasion.

Fish Frenzy, Elizabeth Street Pier

A recent Saturday lunch. I had the prawns with Caesar salad... I made a bad menu choice. The salad was drowning in dressing and the prawns were what you'd expect from a corner fish and chippery. Seafood chowder - this was J's much better menu choice. Thick and hearty and perfect for a cold day.