Pescetarian restaurant Sylvie moves into Hobart’s Lower House

New kids on the block Sylvie offers something different each week, but one thing will always stay the same, the restaurant’s chef says.

Chef Martin Dreyer at Sylvie Hobart. Picture: Linda Higginson

The menu might change from week-to-week for the new kids on the block Sylvie but one thing that does stay the same — centring Tasmanian produce.

The restaurant offers a pescetarian tasting restaurant cooked up by chef Martin Dreyer, who brings his experience working in top restaurants across Europe to Tasmanian seafood and produce.

“You never quite know what you’re going to get and we change the menu to reflect what’s available at that moment in time,” Mr Dreyer said.

“It’s very much a snapshot of what we can get in Southern Tasmania in the moment.”
Sourcing food from local farmers, fishermen and even backyard growers, the restaurant has been open for the past five months serving up seasonal offerings.

Sylvie Hobart at the former site of the Lower House. Picture: Linda Higginson

He described his cooking as “very instinctive” and the choice to be pescetarian — with seafood the only meat on the menu — was influenced by his time in Denmark at a two Michelin star restaurant.

Mr Dreyer has had a connection to Tasmania since he moved to Hobart with his parents when he was 16-years-old and says coming back to open a restaurant in the city had always been a “dream”.

“It’s always been something that I’ve wanted to do ever since I can remember,” he said.

“When I was getting into cooking, it was ‘oh one day I want to open a restaurant’ and I wanted it to be in Tasmania.”

Sylvie has found a home at the former site of nightclub The Lower House on Murray St, which Mr Dreyer said he jumped at the opportunity to take over the sandstone building with “beautiful bones”.

Originally published as Pescetarian restaurant Sylvie moves into Hobart’s Lower House