T42

PROFILED BY DE GROOTS MEDIA
Elizabeth Street Pier juts finger-like into the harbour of Hobart's waterfront. For over 100 years it served as a storage and loading facility for apples. Today, it houses a modern hotel and restaurant looking over marinas of luxury yachts, the fishing fleet, ferries and the toings and froings of a busy harbour. Take an outside table at T42 and you have a seagull’s eye view of the action. Inside, you can prop at the long bar, sink into the intimate lounges or, simply, take a table for some excellent food, one of the state’s best wine lists and top-shelf selections and a crowd that morphs from business breakfasts through to the witching hour and beyond.

It's popular, crowded, sometimes packed and noisy, and never dull. At the bar, they could be enjoying a mini-steak sandwich with their favourite beer. Outside, Thai-style oysters in the sun with a Monmousseau sparkling chenin blanc from France’s Loire Valley. At one table, marinated kangaroo with an aged Grey Sands Merlot from the Tamar Valley. At another, grilled ocean trout perfectly matched to an ’02 Bannockburn Chardonnay or perhaps a pumpkin, sage and chorizo risotto with an '01 Barbera d'Alba before mellowing into the night with a drop of their 20 single malts, a '79 Comte de Lamaestre Bas Armagnac or a little grappa.

Graeme Phillips