PROFILED BY DE GROOTS MEDIAThe Metz, under various guises, names and management, has been a Sandy Bay fixture for seemingly ever. Like Jimmy Watson’s in Melbourne, it has provided generations of Tasmanian university students and gilded youth with their first taste of many things, including wine. After a period of down-market neglect it’s now back to its best, catering inside or alfresco to a more sophisticated clientele, morphing from business people in for breakfast on the run to ladies who lunch, locals at dinner and on to a more mixed lucky-dip crowd at the bar later in the evening.
Breakfasts run through the standard eggs and Bircher muesli fare while their wood-fired bread lightly flavoured with tomato, garlic and mozzarella is one of the best shared afternoon or pre-dinner nibbles-with-a-glass-of-wine options in the Bay. Failing that, you can choose from a small selection of tapas-style dishes before lunch or dinner. Menus run from chicken and steak sandwiches, vegetarian burgers and calamari salads up to seafood paella, lamb potpie, good fish‘n’chips and scotch fillet or Atlantic salmon steaks – all at very reasonable prices. The wine list is small, but well selected and there’s some very tempting top-shelf numbers to enjoy inside at the bar. Little wonder it’s back to being as popular as ever.
Graeme Phillips