Side-step… glide… pirouette. The kaiseki at Hobart’s Omotenashi is a mesmerising sequence of carefully choreographed kitchen craft and profound, ingredient-led cooking that respects both the Japanese tradition on which it’s based and the finest Tasmanian produce. Picking one dish, then, is like singling out a single movement in a pas de deux. Perhaps it’s best to talk about the dashi broth, made from spring water collected from the slopes of nearby Mount Wellington. Flavoured with kelp and shavings of bonito, the first brew (ichi ban dashi) becomes a heavenly clear soup poured around nasturtium-green dumplings filled with a crayfish farce.

While the drive to Masaaki’s Geeveston outpost is a picturesque one, Hobartians rejoiced when Osaka-born chef Masaaki Koyama returned to the city’s Sunday Farm Gate market in late 2025 after a nine-year absence. If you’ve got places to be, the line for pre-made nigiri, inari and mini sushi rolls moves quickly; more rewarding is the slow-moving queue for temaki, an exercise in patience that leaves shopping-centre sushi for dust. Choose from prawn, tuna or ocean trout, then watch as Koyama carefully layers each sheet of nori with glistening rice, pickled carrot and beetroot, caramelised kombu, coriander flowers and local wasabi.

It’s amazing the difference a quality sausage can make. At Six Russell – a bakery-slash-bistro from the owners of Hobart Cantonese institution Me Wah – Macca’s famous Sausage & Egg McMuffin gets a glow-up. Per its golden-arched inspiration, you’ll need to order at the counter, but any fast-food comparisons end there – you can expect a juicy fennel-and-herb-spiked free-range pork patty, a just-set square of omelette, melted American-style cheese, and dill and caper sauce spread liberally on both sides of a toasted English muffin (or, if the in-house bakers are feeling ‘extra’ that day, a brioche bun).

Devil’s Corner added a new food offering to its cellar door on Tasmania’s East Coast in late 2025, led by head chef Jack Bennett, previously of The Chophouse, Falls Creek and Hotel Trentham. (Worry not: long-term tenant Fishers of Freycinet is still steaming mussels and shucking oysters on site.) Bennett’s pastas are built around sustainable local proteins, including wild venison – an invasive species. This is marinated overnight in Devil’s Corner pinot noir to soften the gamy flavours, then slow-cooked in beef stock with juniper berries and cremini mushrooms. Folded through handmade pasta, a sprinkling of Parmigiano Reggiano seals the deal.

Before they ran the inner-suburban diner that’s become a favourite of Hobart’s food cognoscenti, James Latham and Rose Tweeddale were best-known for the doughnuts they sold at the local farmer’s market. So it’s no surprise that one of the most popular menu items at Trophy Room is a doughnut, albeit a savoury one. Cheese and freshly ground black pepper, key components of cacio e pepe, are added to a choux pastry-style batter. This is piped directly into the deep fryer, where it puffs up and develops a crisp shell. Slices of mortadella are layered underneath, before a final avalanche of pecorino.

Set among the orchards in Tasmania’s Huon Valley, Willie Smith’s has become a favourite stop for those with even a mild interest in cider. However, it might not be the drinks that you talk about afterwards. As well as a tasting paddle of Willie’s finest, the Valley Experience delivers a toasted sandwich highlighting the products of three Tassie heroes. Double-smoked ham (Cygnet Butchery), smoked cheddar (Ashgrove Cheese) and bechamel are layered between slices of Summer Kitchen sourdough that’s fried until golden brown. This movie-star sandwich is followed by a towering apple pie stacked with fruit and vanilla bean ice cream.

This curried egg sandwich does the tuckshop classic proud, courtesy of some fine Tasmanian produce. The hero ingredient – the eggs – are regeneratively farmed: Westbae Pastoral’s free-range chickens roam open pastures, producing eggs with deep yellow yolks, which Sunbear soft-boils and spikes with a house-made curry paste. To complete the picture, thick-sliced sourdough comes from Hobart’s Pigeon Whole Bakers; the beetroot and greens are sourced from Valley Fresh Farm, an organic producer in the Huon Valley, just 40 minutes from Hobart. Bursting with flavour and goodness, you’ll need two hands for this epic cafe-style sanga, and a handful of napkins, too.

If crayfish mornay sounds decidedly ’80s, that’s because it is. At Hursey Seafoods in Stanley, a small fishing town on Tassie’s far north-west tip, southern rock lobsters (AKA crayfish) are sourced from the family fleet, which has worked these waters for decades. Here, the sweet tail meat is sliced and folded through a rich house-made cheddar sauce, coated in yet more cheddar, then baked in-shell until golden and bubbling. A no-fuss side salad and handful of chips complete the picture. While the dining room has recently undergone a stylish face-lift, the iconic giant red lobster on the roof (thankfully) remains.

If you see wallaby skewers on the menu at this Launceston wine bar, order them. The furry little marsupials are cute, for sure, but they’re also a highly sustainable source of protein that’s been consumed on the island for some 60,000 years. Here, cubes of wallaby porterhouse are grilled over hot coals to rare, then served alongside bread and butter-style zucchini pickles and a slightly sweet, slightly tart beetroot and plum ketchup. To complete your local experience, they’re a great match for the Havilah gamay (owner Ricky Evans is also winemaker for Two Tonne Tasmania, Woodlawn and Havilah wines).

While on a road trip from Los Angeles to Nashville in 2022, Bread + Butter founders Olivia and Rob Morrison ate so many diner-style cinnamon buns, they were inspired to make their own. Made with an enriched, brioche-like dough filled with cultured cinnamon butter and topped with cream cheese frosting, theirs are fairly traditional, apart from a lick of orange zest. Just one tray of 15 buns is made each Saturday morning, and only at Bread + Butter Bakeshop on Launceston’s Cimitiere Street. If you’re feeling particularly intrepid, the Santa Monica (LA) outpost – which opened last year – bakes them on Sundays, too.

Scott Hall makes Texas-style brisket with a Tassie twist: Westbury-farmed Angus beef is brined overnight in a dry salt and pepper rub, then smoked low and slow for 14-16 hours (barbecue chefs don’t get a lot of sleep, he says). Since starting out in 2022 with “a little tent and a table”, his operation has ballooned to 40kg of brisket a week, which he peddles at Launceston’s Harvest Market and festivals and events around the state. If you can catch him, build yourself a plate (or sandwich) with smoked beef, buttered green beans, mac ‘n’ cheese and tangy Texas-style hot sauce.

There’s almost always a queue outside this nine-seat restaurant, so popular are Javier García Tornel’s handmade noodles. He’s putting a uniquely Tassie spin on the ramen bar concept, with Spanish tunes on the stereo – he’s from Madrid – and just two soups, a rice bowl and a seasonal special. The signature shoyu is built on a deeply flavoured stock (made from Fork It Farm’s heritage-breed bones and dried fish) and garnished with chargrilled pork, braised pork jowl and a jammy egg. The noodles, which sport violet-hued flecks from local purple wheat, are suitably springy. Your best strategy? Come early, and come often.

Stillwater has just celebrated its 25th anniversary, and with plates as considered as this, it’s easy to see why it has such enduring appeal. Executive chef Craig Will sources greenlip abalone from Stanley, on Tassie’s North West coast. It’s harvested by local Indigenous divers whose ancestors have eaten this prized hyper-sustainable catch for some 40,000 years. The meat is steamed for 12 hours to tenderise, then doused in cultured butter flavoured with invasive wakame seaweed harvested off the state’s East Coast. Accompanying green tea soba noodles are made fresh in house, and the dish is served in the abalone shell.

The inspiration for this vibrant pasta dish comes via Italy’s Amalfi Coast, where Pitzi’s owners (who are also the team behind Hobart fine-diner Fico) went on a ‘research’ trip late last year. Back at their Hobart pasta bar, spaghetti is hand extruded, then cooked to order, while the white-wine-spiked sauce takes its luminous green hue from organically grown green bullhorn peppers. Cheese with seafood (in this case, plump, briny mussels from Spring Bay, on Tassie’s East Coast) might seem a little unorthodox, but lashings of sharp, salty Pecorino Romano really brings this dish together.

It’s not often you see ‘deer milk’ on a menu, though it’s one of the least outrageous elements at Faro, the Surrealist restaurant at Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art. Here it’s made into a gelato for ‘Takeaway Society’, which is named after the container it’s served in (a ceramic takeout-style box by local artist Jay Song). Crunchy, salty and sweet, its combination of gelato and panna cotta, saffron custard, brittle made from jalapeno-dusted corn nuts (AKA, those snacks you find in dive bars) and corn juice cake sounds chaotic on paper, but makes complete sense on the spoon.