The Top 10 Restaurants in Tasmania

This list was considered and updated in May 2013 using various sources including Gourmet Traveller, Trip Advisor, The Age Good Food Guide and other sites listed below. A little local knowledge and personal experience was added and the list is not a ranking as such but each Restaurant in the list represents together what is probably the best cross section of dining experiences available across Tasmania at the moment. There are about 37,000 restaurants in Australia and about 1000 eateries in Tasmania with some 341 counting as "Restaurants" according to the Age Good Food Guide, so being in the Top Ten list is a reasonable indicator that these places are worth a try.

1
Garagistes - (no longer in operation)

Innovative, run by people with flair and genuine-ness. These people not only know how to prepare stand-out food but match it with hospitality. Their skillful covert marketing seems to happen all by itself. The positioning in part of an old Volkswagon repair shop seems to add to the hip style. Implied promises match the result: it is different and exciting; slightly communal; innovative, cool and the food hits all the right notes for critics from all over. Looks like its a must!
see more at www.garagistes.com.au
AGFG review here
"Tetsuya’s-trained chef Luke Burgess has moved into an old mechanic’s garage in Murray Street where he’s banking on locals embracing his avant-garde dining ideals ?no bookings, communal seating, spare industrial interior and a menu featuring at least half a dozen ingredients they can’t identify" (Gourmet Traveller March 2011) It works!

2
The Stackings at Peppermint Bay

Whatever they say about Tasmania, on of our foremost advantages are what Neville Shute described as some of the best cruising waters in the world. The D'Entrecasteaux Channel is what he was referring to and at Woodbridge (Peppermint Bay) you find that the former site of the Woodbridge Hotel has become one of the most visited establishments in this part of the world. They have a couple of public moorings and a regular hi speed catamaran service between the Restaurant and the Hobart CBD at Sullivans Cove
".. explore chef David Moyle's innovative menu, with dishes such as clams, nettle custard and wild garlic or desserts of wild Bolivian chocolate, prune and lavender. . . . The experience is simultaneously nostalgic and modern"(Gourmet Traveller July 2012). Peppermint Bay website

3
Ethos Eat Drink

4
Me Wah

5
Remi de Provence

6
Frogmore Creek

7
Stillwater

8
we're working on this one

9
The Beach Restaurant

Not quite fine dining but close in some respects and open late every night with gourmet pizzas and an innovative bistro menu and one of the few on a spectacular beachfront near Hobart. It’s down the coast a few kilometres, but the Beach Restaurant is right on the beach and, in a waterside city, it is remarkable how few restaurants and cafes have been able to secure waterside premises. Perhaps in the years to come the beach and building will be underwater. In the meantime, you will appreciate the view and, indoors, the fire in winter.
Visit the Beach Restaurant website

10
Fresh on Charles

This one is in the list because of a great wrap in the Sydney Morning Herald on 10th November 2012 (SMH Article). The style of the place seems seductive and although only open for Dinner on Thursday to Saturday you might find it among the best on the grounds of ambience. It reminds me a bit of the 70's style haunt on the esplanade at Lorne where I had the best bangers and mash of my life in 2008. That hippy haunt was a genuine relic from the 70's whereas Fresh on Charles is new but the cold war era mural and the couches seem to elecit a similar vibe.
Visit the Fresh on Charles website