PROFILED BY DE GROOTS MEDIAHunter Street is where the British sailors, red coats, and convicts first landed, pitched their tents, built the gallows, and founded Hobart in 1804. It’s where the colony’s first taverns and traders’ warehouses were subsequently built. Sealers and whalers sailed from its wharf and scarlet ladies coloured the nights. It also housed Henry Jones’s IXL Jam Factory which sweetened national palates for well over 100 years until its demise into an industrial skeleton in the 1970s. Today the factory’s facade fronts a wonderful boutique art hotel and, at Jam Packed, those childhood jam sandwiches have become foccacias, coffee and modern light eats, and a literally jam-packed larder of Tasmania’s finest produce.
Both providore and cafe, you can enjoy a close tete-a-tete coffee and cookie in corner nooks; salads or antipasti outside overlooking Constitution Dock and the fishing fleet; or one of the city’s best and best-value breakfasts in the masterfully restored internal atrium where they used to boil the fruits and make the jams. The jams today are stacked alongside fudges, honeys, fruit vinegars, condiments, and sauces from specialist producers around the state, home-made biscuits and excellent chocolates and the Tassie wine is well-sourced and priced. Altogether, a multi-faceted delight.