When service begins on February 3rd, The Rox, one of Hobart’s newest boutique accommodation offerings, could have Australia’s most sought after in-room dining: a collaboration with acclaimed wine bar Sonny, just a few minutes’ walk away on Elizabeth Street. 

While it came about as the result of a casual conversation across the bar this is not a case of ordinary room service fare. At $150 a head this is the Sonny experience within the privacy of The Rox says chef and Sonny owner Matt Breen. 

“It’ll be six or seven courses put into little tiffin boxes, stacked up and run up the road with a bottle of wine by one of our staff members,” says Breen. The menu will be a moving feast he says, the structure of which will stay the same as it does with Sonny, but will follow their weekly menu changes with different pastas and snacks. “They’ll pretty much get a taste of everything that we do at Sonny, with a couple of extra little bits and pieces to make it special for them, and a bottle of wine of our choice that will go with the food nicely,” says Breen.

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Sonny specialises in smaller wine producers that are “doing really fun and exciting things,” says Breen. “We don’t pigeonhole ourselves too much, so yeah [the wine] is really going to vary depending on the menu. Obviously, we’ll try and sneak some Tasmanian stuff in there where we can because there’s some pretty exciting producers coming out this year, or it could just be a good bottle of Champagne.”

At the corner of Elizabeth and Brisbane Street, in what is now dubbed as MidTown, The Rox is on the site of what has been Roxborough House and the snappily titled Total and Permanently Incapacitated Hostel which housed returning WWII servicemen. A mixed modern and heritage development it includes four self-contained apartments available for short-term stays. 

The Rox Penthouse boasting a 91 sqm rooftop terrace, and The Rox Apartment, form part of the modern development while The Elizabeth Apartment and The Alexander Apartment, have been developed as part of the historic Scotch College building well known to Hobartians. Tess Newman-Morris whose work has been seen on Satellite Island developed interior concepts, with a particular focus on Tasmanian designers, furniture makers and potters.

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Considering the reputation of the walk-in only wine bar and the fact that a spot on one of Sonny’s twenty stools is coveted real estate in Hobart dining, there will surely be no shortage of takers come February 3rd. “We have a line of 10 people deep most of the night trying to get in,” says Breen. “If you’re coming to Hobart and it’s your last day, say, a Sunday afternoon and you want to relax in your room at The Rox, you just get Sonny in house. We’ll even add a little link to our Spotify playlist so you can listen to what we’re listening to.”

Room Service from Sonny will be available to guests from February 3rd, 2022. For more info and bookings, head to www.theroxhobart.com/

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