Woke up at an ungodly hour of 4 or 4:30 or something like that. A couple of hours later, found myself marvelling at this sunrise as we glided above the clouds, right before touching down in
Hobart, Tasmania.
I had a faces in places sighting pretty quickly!
I fed it some moolah to buy a bottle of tasty Tasmanian water, but it regurgitated almost all the money I gave it bar 50 cents! The water in Melbourne is very palatable, but the water in Tasmania is something else... the description on my bottle of water read,
"Collected from a spring in the Tasmanian highlands, on the edge of the world's last great temperate wilderness. Contains water that gathered in rain clouds over the untamed Southern Ocean, falling as rain and snow on the island of Tasmania thousands of years ago and hasn't seen the light of day since." Wow.
We headed straight to the
Salamanca market (which I loved, so many interesting sights, sounds and smells)...
...where I got a GINORMOUS stick of
fairy floss for breakfast! (The dude behind me is jealous, fairy floss > that bratwurst he's having)
The fairy floss spinner spent several loooong minutes spinning... every time I looked over at him, the size of the fairy floss just got bigger, and bigger, and bigger! When he finally handed it to me, he almost looked apologetic and embarrassed. Oh I was so giddy with excitement, I almost reached over to give him a big hug as I yelped,
"OHMYGODTHATISHUGETHANKYOU!!" It was about 3 times the size of my head! I skipped along stalls chirping,
"This is the best day ever!!!" while stuffing handfuls of pink sugar into my mouth, but the ginormous ball of fairy floss was surprisingly quick to disappear and before I knew it there was none left.... boo.
Ok, this was my real breakfast. Mushrooms with avocado, lemon and pepper on sourdough toast.
What I really love about Tasmania is the abundance of fresh produce. There's something about this island, where the climate is cool, the water is pure, and the air is crisp and unpolluted.. the combination of these factors and more does something magical to the local produce. So we took advantage of this by eating lots of it!
Lunch was at
Meadowbank Estate, where the dining room overlooked the vineyards and rolling hills.
And then there was
soufflé. THE perfect soufflé. Oh my gosh. Soufflés reinstate my faith in mankind. Soufflés make me believe there is a god. And that god wants us to be happy. And that life is wonderful and amazing and so beautiful. Soufflé makes me exclaim,
"This is the best day ever!!!!!" while Brett sniggers at me,
"But you always say that...."
Dinner was at the very trendy hotspot
Garagistes. There was a 2 hour wait before we could be seated - that's so Melbourne to have a no booking policy - so by the time we tore into these char-grilled fatty lamb ribs that were glazed in a lemon and coriander seed dressing, we were famished and in awe of how amazing these ribs were.... we were rendered speechless and could only nod in unison between gasps of
"oh wow". They were chin-and-hands-drippingly juicy, so flavoursome yet so balanced! I was impressed with how the lemon in the glaze was never too sour no matter how much of it you wiped up with your rib.
It was so dark that I didn't bother with anymore photos after the crappy one above. Some of the other dishes we had for the rest of the evening were spectacular (the very flavoursome hanger steak), but there were misses too (the chawan mushi with poached spanner crab and sea urchin mousse almost had me gagging). The food style here was clear though - courageous, confident and surprising. Not surprising I suppose since head chef Luke Burgess had trained with Tetsuya in Sydney before his two year stint at Noma in Copenhagen.
With full bellies from a day filled with so much delicious eating, it was the end of our first day in Hobart.
