eating Hobart

The Apple Isle

With so many great suggestions in hand, our trip to Hobart was one, long picnic (albeit in slightly Arctic weather).

The first meal was on waking bright and early. We’d planned to get up at a decent hour and head off to the Salamanca market. Just after opening the place was buzzing already and we dived into the first café with a name I recognised and fortified ourselves with caffeine and sustenance.

Retro Café, reminded me of something out of Brunswick Street in the ‘80s. Fortunately I’m fond of Fitzroy boho so I warmed to it immediately. As promised, the coffee was excellent. In fact it was the pick of the crop in my time in town. Food included the usual hot and cold breakfasts on the menu but the specials board had a number of enticing options. My friend went for a veggie stack of roasted tomatoes, other vegetable offerings, poached eggs and pesto while I opted for some local smoked salmon served with eggs, spinach and hollandaise. Serving sizes were decent and though the most expensive of the three cooked breakfasts I had in town (still reasonably prized in the teens) it was the largest and left us feeling satisfied.

Stepping out the door of the cosy café and back into the market I wished we were staying somewhere we could cook, as the fresh produce looked great. The next few hours were spent wandering and grazing. Taking in Battery Point, scoping out Jackmas and McRoss, looking at the scenery and making a final market sweep (and sampling some tempura mushrooms from a market vendor that we just had to try) before entering Knopwoods for some mulled wine by the fire.


Berries in winter - Salamanca market

Though we’d been eating all day, there was still dinner to look forward to. Orizuru a modest Japanese restaurant on the water came highly recommended and despite the weather sushi was just about all we were able to fit into our stomachs. Sharing a dinner platter for two ($47) – the sushi, sashimi and nori rolls were fresh and certainly up to standard. Being Tasmania this also came with oysters that I am told were excellent. Considering the location, the restaurant was surprisingly understated.

Fortified by warm sake we headed off to the wilds of North Hobart in search of entertainment. But that’s another story!

Sunday started considerably later than the day before. With aching eyeballs we headed off for a bracing walk to Jackman & McRoss, the much talked about bakery in Battery Point. Scoring a table beside the window we finally managed to get the eye of the hesitant young waitress a to order some much needed coffee. My long black, though drinkable lacked substance and I’d rank it bottom of the three brews I had in town. While the hot breakfast specials were modestly priced my eggs and spinach with aioli on a chunk of white sourdough was more entrée sized. The aioli was a little sparse and appeared to have been grilled. Though tasty it left me wanting. Or at least that was the excuse I used to justify ordering a more jumbo sized chocolate croissant. My friend was seduced by the porridge, scented with orange and served with glazed figs. The little soufflé dish of cooked oats looked good but wasn’t quite as exciting as she’d have hoped. Sadly there were no carnivores with us to taste test the savoury pastry topped with a slice of black pudding, which was one of the most unusual ‘danishes’ I’ve ever seen on offer.



All the lovely bread for sale at Jackman and McRoss, Battery Point

Our final dinner was a stunner. It had taken a little coaxing to talk my companion into walking past the nearby Thai restaurant and trek up Elizabeth Street once more, in the gentle rain and darkness. But dinner at Royal Thai was definitely worth the journey. Recently relocated to flash new premises, this was some of the best Thai food I have eaten outside of Asia. I swear I have to go back to Hobart with a large group of people solely to sample a wider variety of dishes. We’d already decided that our bodies were craving vegetables and flipped to the vegetarian section at the back of the menu. There was a lot to choose from. Feeling a little tired and cold we opted for comfort choices of noodles and curry. What was delivered to our table by the friendly and efficient waitress was pad Thai and green curry at its best. The noodle dish was presented authentically with peanuts, chilli, bean shoots and lemon on the side to season ourselves, while the curry was freshly spiced with notable flavours of basil and chilli but balanced by a whole range of other notes. Not a huge fan of dessert, I couldn’t resist a combination of sticky rice, banana and black beans, wrapped and steamed, providing a satisfying and not too sweet way to finish the meal.

Our final meal of note was back at Salamanca place for breakfast at Zum. This sleek eatery would not have been out of place in Paddington or South Yarra and was buzzing at 9 o’clock on a Monday morning. There was even a local TV celebrity at the next table. Coffee was good and served promptly. Almost as enjoyable as Retro’s it made a close runner-up in my tally sheet. I succumbed to the delicious local smoked salmon once more, which was served on a well executed thick round of roesti with spinach and hollandaise. This was the winner, satisfying, well presented and a “potato pancake” cooked to perfection. We stayed awhile chatting and savouring both the food and the atmosphere.

With still so many unexplored food options, Hobart is a town I’d definitely return to. We filled three days easily, navigating the inner city on foot. With carry-on only luggage I was restricted in what I could bring back to the mainland but the market and nearby deli’s had so many treasures it was hard to restrain ourselves. I’ll give you a peak of those tomorrow!

Retro Café
31 Salamanca Pl
(03) 6223 3073

Knopwoods Retreat Tavern & Wine Bar
39 Salamanca Place
(03) 62235808

Orizuru Sushi Bar
Victoria Dock
(03) 6231 1790

Jackman & McRoss
59 Hampdon Rd.
Battery Point
(03) 6223 3186

Royal Thai
199 Elizabeth St
(03) 6234 1366

Zum Salamanca
29 Salamanca Place
(03) 6223 23239

blog meet reminder

Just before I pop out for a long weekend on a wet windy island (thanks so much Rita and everyone who has contributed to our itinerary it is much appreciated), a timely reminder that the Meatless Blog meet draws ever closer. Just 8 days away in fact.

Date: Saturday 26th July
Time: 12.30
Place: Lentil as Anythings @ The Convent, Abbotsford and afterwards at Handsome Steve’s House of Refreshment.

If you have ever felt a little daunted by the idea of providing a dish for a group of people obsessed about food - this is the food bloggers meet up for you! Simple vegetarian fare as cheap as you'd like it to be, while supporting the refugee community at the same time.

At the moment there are 12-14 people who've said they will turn up. We can't book but there are a variety of seating options we can pile around. Some of us will be very punctual.

Check back in next week for any other means we have to signal who we are.

pretty purple vegetables

For no other reason, except acknowledging that you have been confronted by a lot of text here at Chez Nazi and too little pictorial prettiness, I give you...



turnips (Vic Market, June 2008).

There has been a paucity of recipes too, I know, though a rather lot of cooking. But do you really need a recipe for (gluten-free) pasta with baked cauliflower and anchovies?

But back to turnips. Is there anything wintery and exciting you can do with them that doesn't involve cheese or meat?

Just a thought.

breakfast, lunch and dinner in Hobart?

Keeping with the theme of “Weekend getaways colder than Melbourne in winter”, I’m off in another week for three days in Hobart. While this will make a nice change from the frequent trips across the Tasman to do the family tour of duty, I have never been to Tasmania mainly because I kept getting told it is so like my hometown.

So what is a gal to do in Hobart? Where to eat and drink and wander? We will be staying in the city, a short walk from the Salamanca Market (which is the only thing on my to do list) and won’t have a car.

Ideas anyone?

the bad egg

It wasn’t so much an egg, though we will get to that, rather a nasty wedge of avocado.

I am very fussy at the best of times but avocadoes bring out the worst in me. I border on phobic when it comes to blighted fruit. A black bit on an avocado, stringiness or downright past its use by date in my book means it is not acceptable to end up on a customer’s plate. When you are paying for a side order, there is an expectation that every mouthful is edible. This was not.

The slim quarter of the avocado sat innocuously enough with its pit side down. There was a pesky spot a couple of centimetres wide which I considers cutting around. Turning the fruit over for a closer inspection I found the discolouration had riddled its way right through with a dark blemish engulfing at least a quarter of the slice. The flesh around the area was old, watery and unappealing.

I caught the waiter’s eye and pointed to it saying “any chance of another piece of avocado?” There was no hesitation on her part and though she didn’t whisk the fruit away, she did head off to the kitchen in search of a replacement. During those 4 minutes I made some decent headway through my breakfast. The hash brown tasted old and tired. A home made offering, not one of those dreaded processed bricks but pre-fried possibly days ago and on its last legs none the less. The eggs while poached sufficiently, had curious whites. One was scraggy like a sea creature and the other had been sliced off in chunks leaving a rhomboid shape of just a couple of centimetres of egg white around the yolk. I much prefer to eat the yolk so I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything but visually it didn’t look right and I wondered just how bad the offending parts had been for them to be removed in such a way.

This place is known for it’s homemade bread. After a wheat-free week I was looking forward to some good quality, crunchy toast. Yet even the amputated poached eggs carried enough water to rob the toast of its crispness. In fact it was so disappointing I may have well eaten a couple of slices of the tasteless gluten-free bread for all the flavour and texture it had to offer.

The coffee was drinkable but bland and not exactly what I’d ordered. I sipped it for a while none the less.

I dread writing a bad review of a neighbourhood restaurant. The last time I did the café closed shortly after. No not from the power of my words alone of course but we are a fickle bunch and move our loyalty elsewhere even from a favourite if it fails to perform. Just a couple of weeks ago I had a similar meal with a fellow blogger. We all enjoyed each mouthful of our different breakfasts but Black Ruby – you are officially on notice. We’ve put up with the vagaries of your odd flavour pairings in your savoury menu for years. You are a little quirky but the spirit of the place has kept pulling your though. But when breakfast goes bad – the locals start walking and as we know you have families to support we’d really like you get your act together and stay.

First the dried out black bean sausage. Now this. You can have an off day with the hash browns, the odd misshapened egg is allowable but soggy toast and a rotten avocado – come on you can do better than this.

reflections on the 1 week wheat-free challenge

The week long challenge is over and I started the first day beyond the wheat-free zone no differently, with my oaty breakfast. There were no cravings for pancakes or even real toast. So I ask myself just how different my diet was during the week and whether it was truly representative of my usual eating habits?

I already have dietary restrictions around most dairy and meat as most of you would are aware. I had some hesitation about taking on another potential limitation to my way of eating but I figured that I didn’t eat wheat for nutrition, just for convenience and variety. I had considered going gluten-free and it would have been if my oats were certified coeliac friendly (though a member of the grass family it is usually cross contamination from other gluten-rich grains in the manufacturing process that is problem with oats).

Another aspect that I wanted to incorporate into my challenge was to use produce already in the pantry and fridge and if I wanted any ‘special’ wheat-free requests I had to wait and see what the SE could get in his regular supermarket shopping trip. Although a short hop away are many specialist stores catering for all sorts of dietary restrictions, I wanted to see what it would be like for the ‘average’ person or family who for health reasons needed to live a wheat-free life. All the evening meals were communal so we would cook for each other as usual. The SE made no complaints. Well one. This wouldn’t be the week the solstice cake got it’s grand unveiling.

Of course it could be argued that we mightn’t be the most ‘average’ household in many respects. On the food front we’d already switched to wheat-free pasta 90% of the time and bread is not a daily part of our diets. But who wants to be normal anyway? In the average wheat worshiping home, a little preparation for the challenge is recommended to make the transition easier.

So just how normal was this week for us? These days we’d average 5-7 evening meals at home. The previous fortnight we’d eaten out 4-5 evenings a week but that was unusual as a result of family visits and trips away. Regardless of the challenge we both were hanging out for a week of home cooked food. But I did want to eat out at a place we’d normally choose just to see how it would go. This was only vetoed at the end of the week due to the large amount of uneaten food and leftovers still in the fridge, so I ate Thai food close to work on the last day for lunch instead.

After the end of semester madness, it was lovely to have the SE on duty in the kitchen again. I think he’d missed it as much as me. Consequently the cooking was evenly shared throughout the time. Neither of us made any dinners that were out of the ordinary. We tend to have a couple of fresh fish meals, tinned tuna for a backup, a legume dish or two, a curry, something with tofu and often a stir fry or a pasta dish. I had planned more grains dishes – a millet or quinoa pilaf at least but we made too many double-batch size meals to fit the extra ones in. There are always lots of vegetables. I was happy to see that quantity wise there was more than the recommended 5 serves (2.5 cups) of veggies and 2 serves of fruit in some form.

We did eat more sweet things than usual. The SE has become a chocolate fiend and I need absolutely no encouragement when it comes to the beloved bean. The ice cream had sat in the fridge for over 2 months and needed to be eaten. Tough job but someone’s got to do it. I’m sure I’d usually have more alcohol-free days (at least 3 or 4 a week). Though I imbibed more frequently the quantities were within those dreaded nutritional guidelines none the less.

Lunches were a bit annoying. Though on a workday I never have a sandwich, I often go Japanese for either nori rolls or ebi don. As both involved soy sauce I had to change my habits. If it is going to be a long day at work, I’ll often have a vegetarian combination of dhal, veggie curries, rice and condiments at Sheni’s Curries. However with the amount of chilli and rice in my evening meals as the week wore on, I decided to not double dose. I did however find an acceptable MSG-free Thai outlet in the city, where I will go back again to explore their few vegetarian options. But while workday lunches could be navigated, the weekend pull towards Babka or similar cafes was just too difficult to risk. Now that did peeve me somewhat. To read through a café menu and find nothing that suited all my food restrictions without ending up with just a plate of beans or an egg was quite disheartening.

On the whole the week wasn’t too much of a challenge. I was a little daunted about disclosing my eating and drinking habits for the world to judge but I think I came out pretty well.

Thanks for all the words of encouragement along the way. Glad my menus have been an inspiration to some. Maybe I will do a snapshot of my week again sometime in the future.

Some wheat-free friendly food tips

A good primer on where wheat lurks in common foods is on the food intolerance awareness site. There is also a reminder for carnivores that wheat is used as fillers and crumbs in many meaty delights.

Some beverages like beer, whiskey, soy milks and other such malt containing food contain wheat. (See link above for more details).

Tamari – unlike soy sauce and shoyu that are also fermented soy based sauces, tamari is wheat-free. I’ve always preferred the flavour and it is what I use at home anyway.

Grains – corn, rice, oats, quinoa, amaranth, millet, rye, buckwheat and barley all fit the wheat-free category. (contain gluten)

Spelt is a member of the wheat family yet I am amazed at how many retailers claim it is both wheat and gluten-free. I know at least one local pizza place that makes a spelt pizza base claiming it is gluten-free (the chef told me this is that this is what all the gluten-free products in Italy is made from, I haven’t verified that). Even some esteemed food writers seem to have confused this fact. There are a lot of reasons why spelt may be better tolerated by people with a wheat intolerance but over use of any alternative grain usually brings on the symptoms after a while.

Beans are great and versatile, though if you are carnivore meat and vegetables make an obvious wheat-free combination. Casseroles thicken up nicely with cornflour.

The 1 week wheat-free challenge: Day 7

2 x boiled eggs on pretend gluten-free toast.

Pad Thai with prawns (rice noodles, prawns and minimal other ingredients – egg, tofu, veg plus fish sauce and peanuts).

Seared tuna (medium rare) with leftover Sri Lankan curry (a surprisingly good combo).

2 x mandarins.

Dagoba chocolate

Fluids: 1 espresso, 1 brandy and soda, 1 peppermint and liquorice herbal tea, water.

Notes: I’d planned to eat out at my local Thai restaurant for the final night of the challenge but the SE vetoed this due to the amount of leftovers we were accumulating. So the Pad Thai for lunch, not my usual choice, was an attempt to find a half decent Thai meal and choose what I’d usually have.

The GF bread still tasted crap and I struggled to finish an otherwise enjoyable breakfast.

So you want another pussy pic?


So the challenge is over. There were no breaches that I was aware of. Tomorrow I'll post about what I learnt from the experience. Thanks for your support over this week.

The 1 week wheat-free challenge: Day 6

Oats soaked in rice milk, dried cranberries, golden kiwi fruit, hazelnuts and crumbled corn thins.

Masala Dosa (fermented lentil and rice flour crispy ‘pancake’ with potato and spice stuffing, served with dahl, veg curry and sambals).

Mandarin.

Sri Lankan chickpea curry (with broccoli, cauliflower and onion) plus brown rice.

Mototo ‘ice cream’ with warm cherries.

Fluid: 1 espresso, water, 1 brandy and soda.

Notes: I’ve always loved dosas but amidst the wheat-free week the lovely crispy texture at the edges was particularly delicious. The SE cooked again – yippee!

What no pretty food pic? Here's a kitty instead.

The 1 week wheat-free challenge: Day 5

Porridge with rhubarb and apple compote.

2 x rice crackers.

Gluten-free pasta with onion, silverbeet, garlic, sun dried tomatoes and tuna.

Mandarin.

Chilli beans (kidney beans, onion, parsnip, carrot, tomatoes and lots of delicious spices) with brown rice

1 piece of gluten free (Country Life) toast with vegemite.

Fluid: 1 espresso, 1 elder flower cordial, water

Note: had a business meeting scheduled in a café before (rather than at) lunch. I noticed that it would have been easier to eat vegan than wheat-free with what was on offer. Needed something starchy for lunch so hit the GF pasta.

The NB came back with a supermarket bought GF loaf so had to try it. What can I say? It looked promising but tasted of nothing. A bit like the soy cheese, I find it hard to get excited by the “pretend” foods, though these days I actually prefer GF pasta over regular.


Could a cup a day keep the undertaker away?

The 1 week wheat-free challenge: Day 4

Fruit salad with raw pistachios.

Salad: mixed greens (rocket, beetroot leaves, parsley), leftover roast potato, tuna, real mayonnaise.

Dried apricots.

Pelecing style sambal of mixed Asian greens (lots!) and tofu, with rice.

Fluid: fresh orange and lemon juice, 1 espresso, water, 1 glass of wine (well the bottle was still open).

Notes: Turned down the chance to go to Babka for lunch. I just couldn’t risk the temptations of one of my favourite bakeries.

Here's a pic is of yesterday's ice cream. Made from rice starch and egg yolk, with coeliac friendly other bits it tastes surprisingly good.