PROFILED BY DE GROOTS MEDIAThis is the latest and best of a sudden boom in the number of tapas/cocktail/wine bars in the city. With classy, understated, contemporary decor and design, upstairs is a moodily under-lit and intimate scattering of lounges while the street-front downstairs is more open with window benches, private nooks and communal seating round an enormous long table. And downstairs is where the action is - barmen expertly mixing, shaking, muddling and stirring their stuff from a list of over 160 different cocktails; and the kitchen pumping out a medley of wonderful, ultra-modern tapas inspired by the flavours of Spain (obviously), Italy, Thailand and Japan.
Chef Alistair Patterson’s menu runs from the simplicity of Serrano jamon with green olive tapenade to cutting-edge numbers like scallop over vanilla eggplant with pickled pineapple wafer, and fabulous ocean trout sashimi with wasabi pannacotta, black beans and flying fish roe, or baby abalone on pickled daikon with yuzu granita. And there’s a very good international wine list to match, including top Almecenista sherries, grower Champagnes, Portuguese vinho verdes and many others found nowhere else in Hobart, with lots available by the glass. To compensate for all those head-spinning cocktails and wines, they most considerately also open for breakfast to help you through the hangover.
Graeme Phillips, November 2007
