Taste Cafe

PROFILED BY DE GROOTS MEDIA
The Baha’i Centre is a little like Dr Who’s Tardis – a complex much larger and more intricately designed and decorated than first impressions might suggest. It is a maze of small, intimate spaces that open into conference-sized rooms with soaring dome ceilings, linked by landscaped courtyards to a library which opens onto still more rooms. The cafe itself consists of small tables with black ottomans scattered around the spacious reception area. Despite the comings and goings of meeting and conference groups, the atmosphere is one of quiet, relaxed tranquillity with tables sufficiently well-spaced as to invite a quiet solitary read over breakfast or coffee, undisturbed by families or tete-a-tete twosomes at other tables.

Chef Karen Goodwin-Roberts’ constantly changing menus are structured to run from breakfasts to lunches and in-betweens and are a roll call of Tasmania’s best ingredients including specialist mini herbs, vegetables and greens delivered daily from a small organic backyard producer in a nearby suburb. The omelettes are properly light and fluffy, her crusty bread, a citrus, almond and polenta syrup cake and her fashionable cup cakes are as good as the best in town while a slow-cooked ox tail in deliciously light creme fraiche pastry is a heart-warming foil to Hobart’s wintry weather, the accompanying dob of cumquat marmalade in turn a perfect foil to the sweet richness of the meat. As they say, it’s all good. In this case, very good.

Graeme Phillips