#garagistes

[jeromederenne]

«En attendant la réparation de ma voiture, post-production » #postproduction #wedding #garagistes #derennephotography #salledattente (à Braine-l'Alleud)

[wheresbrentbeen]

As you know I visited Tasmania for the New Year holiday and LOVED it… I recommend you spend a couple of days in Hobart and so, here is the lowdown of what to do and where to go when you are not totally consumed with the wonder that is MONA!

Garagistes

EAT

Hobart has some very fine dining options, try the number one hot-spot Garagistes … its located in North Hobart where it all seems to be happening and while I didn’t get to dine here the feedback is all good. Garagistes doesn’t take bookings so get there early and I mean early…say 6:30pm and pray you get a table. If not, leave your name with them and head to their sister establishment around the corner to sit out the wait at Sidecar which is possibly the chicest bar I have seen. Here you can also eat at the bar as we did… it’s super fabulous and totally unique. Try the Wagyu Hot Dog… I loved it. The Calamari is good too and they really know their wines, you will try something completely different and most of them are Italian. You sit right at the bar and they serve all the food on fabulous table wear made in Sanford, Tasmania by Ben Richardson of Ridgeline Pottery. It is chic, fabulous and delicious.

P.S – Just near Garagistes and Sidecar is Ethos eat/drink … I stuck my head in and thought it looked fabulous. I loved the fresh vertical garden out front in the courtyard and the place was buzzing. I will check this one out on my next visit for sure.

Sidecar

Smolt was good option too… it was dinner here, from the team that bring you Mud Bar & Restaurant in Launceston. It has a snappy, local menu and extensive local wine list with breezy service to match from a young, enthusiastic team.

SHOPPING

Shopping in Hobart is great, I loved the Handmark Gallery which must have the best collection of Tasmanian artists and ceramicists. It’s a beautifully curated collection of the best local artists and the gallery also represents Tasmanian painter Robyn McKinnon (whose Mrs Vemeers Kitchen hangs at MONA – it’s stunning!)

Around the corner was A Common Ground, a gourmet providor with the best local produce and they sell the Ridgeline Pottery too! A joint venture from cheesemaker Nick Haddow  from Bruny Island Cheese Co, Gourmet farmer Matthew Evans and Chef, Ross O’Meara… A Common Ground may be just about the smallest providore you have seen but it’s filled with the most intoxicating local produce and the range changes with the season. Take it home with you or you can buy it online!

the maker

Across from A Common Ground is another great store called the maker (all of these stores are located in the heart of Hobart’s historic Salamanca Place). the maker is the exclusive stockist of Tasmanian clothing labels lj struthers and lj junior and is the go-to store for a range of other contemporary Tasmanian artists, jewellers and designers. Oh and you can pick up the latest Kinfolk magazine while you are there.

SLEEP

I didn’t have time to do much more… but word on the street was that I missed a lot. Go now and explore the city like I did and visit MONA, you will love it. Oh and stay at Islington or The Henry Jones Art Hotel (I can recommend the best rooms) . Contact me and I can organise the perfect Hobart escape weekend for you!

A Common Ground

A Common Ground

the maker

Vertical Garden at Ethos

The Henry Jones Art Hotel

the maker

Blogged When in Hobart! Eating, shopping and sleeping in this fab city. As you know I visited Tasmania for the New Year holiday and LOVED it... I recommend you spend a couple of days in Hobart and so, here is the lowdown of what to do and where to go when you are not totally consumed with the wonder that is…

[jazpster]

View this post on Instagram

Throwback to the @100Gourmet/#100Gourmet dinner by talented chefs @ReneKnudsen79 of #OpusBarandGrill #HiltonSingapore and @LukeBurgess77 of #Garagistes. - Use your @Citibank card to enjoy the special 6-course menu for only $100 - http://www.100gourmet.sg/ - Details of upcoming Sep events and Aug highlights here - http://bit.ly/100gourmetaugsep (at Hilton Singapore)

[goodfoodcrapdrawing]

Garagistes

103 Murray Street, Hobart Tasmania

03 6231 0558 | http://www.garagistes.com.au/

Grey oyster + shitake mushrooms cooked over charcoal, poached spanner crab, tarragon + crab brown butter

[goodfoodcrapdrawing]

Garagistes

103 Murray Street, Hobart Tasmania

[phone] | http://www.garagistes.com.au/

Buckwheat + smoked eel agnolotti, venerupis clams + sea blite.

[sofijastefanovic]

Eat Drink Man Woman

For a long time I’ve fetishised a specific type of hermit crab. These crabs live in Vanuatu, and more precisely, in coconuts, which they eat in order to make a home in the empty shell. Full of coconut flesh and milk, the crustaceans waddle around, waiting to be eaten by people like me, who fantasise about crab flesh with a naturally coconutty twist. Thinking about eating them makes me happy, and it makes me remember the time we bought a hard goats cheese from the Cowgirl Creamery in San Francisco. The cheese seller told us these goats were raised in an Italian grapefruit orchard and that they munched on the fruits all the time. This wonderful cheese had a subtle sourness: the grapefruit came through the milk. I imagined the cheeky goats, stealing the grapefruits, artfully climbing the trees to reach the fruits that would later come through their tangy teats and make their way to me, scoffing on the San Francisco harbour. 

Goats climb trees (this is from the Lonely Planet blog, showing fruit-eating Moroccan goats)

The older I get, the more excited I become about fancy food. Last weekend was crazy. Hundreds of dollars were spent on meals fit for kings. The setting was Tasmania, the occasion was my boyfriend’s birthday. So we went to the restaurant Garagistes in Hobart, we broke the back of our MONA visit with a degustation at the restaurant next door. 

Revelations abounded: who would have thought that the mutually-exclusive joys of making out and eating could be brought together in the form of an ox tongue on a skewer, the texture like a tongue, the added bonus the fact you can bite and swallow it and it tastes like a dream? I consumed things I’d never heard of such as celtuce, kohlrabi and lovage. I whinged that I couldn’t taste the chamomile in the chamomile-cured duck eggs. I drank wine that came from the vineyards that surrounded us, I ate crunchy fried sea algae plucked from the Bass Strait that separated me from my home, to which I would return, like some basted, marinated, cured, massaged boar. I was so fond of eating last weekend, that I fantasised about how delicious I would taste, considering the food I’d been stuffing myself with, if only I could roast and eat myself.

Amuse-bouche at Garagistes (photo from here)

And despite this eating frenzy, I know I won’t get fat from it, because the portions are the right size, there are few preservatives and added sugars. The ingredients are local and sustainably farmed. They are prepared by world-class chefs.

I'm not rich, but having an average income in Australia, no children, and only two small dogs to feed, means I can afford to eat like this every once in a while. Still, guilt and shame override when I think how my grandmas (both known for super-saver wartime recipes involving stale bread and one egg) would have reacted if they'd heard how much my meal cost. I remember the poor obese people I met in North Carolina and the poor skinny people I met in Ethiopia. Buckets of food that came out of fry vats in one place, starchy fillers made to trick hungry children into feeling they'd had enough in the other.

A few months after we arrived in Australia we were in Coles. We’d never tried mangoes because they were expensive, but this time, my six-month-old sister grabbed a mango from her seat in the shopping trolley and sunk her two new teeth into it. We had to buy it, and at home, sucking on the mango's delicious pip, I came upon this feeling for the first time: the world is full of surprising and wonderful things to eat.

Spirited Away (Studio Ghibli)