An ambitious new all-rounder that’s worth the drive
Nestled in a lazy river bend, in the peri-urban outskirts of this Tasmanian city, lies a gigantic restaurant and function centre startling in its ambition, writes Alex Treacy.
Food and Wine
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Cradled in a lazy bend of the South Esk River, in the developing suburb of Blackstone Heights, part of Launceston’s peri-urban fringe, is a gigantic restaurant and function centre startling in its ambition.
The Black Stone is thus far the suburb’s only restaurant – it’s only companion is the adjoining Baxter’s IGA, which together form the $8m Blackstone Village unveiled by developer Ross Harrison in January.
In fact, the village is one of the suburb’s few amenities. Its population of 1245 souls currently makes do with a Pentecostal church, a bus service, and a park. In short, it is not the sort of place one expects to find an ambitious restaurant serving a quality menu full of Tasmanian meat and seafood dishes, framed by rolling hills and manicured lawns.
The Black Stone, owned by the Harrison Group, which counts among its Tasmanian assets Orford’s Spring Bay Seafood and Wine Bar, is a great all-rounder.
It serves dinner four nights a week and lunch five days a week, cooking up a roll call of classic dishes: parmigiana, baked salmon, beef and mushroom pie, wagyu rump.
It hosts high-tea in the afternoon – the current monthly theme is ‘Chocolate Obsession’ – and invites thirsty punters in for a drink in its Lounge Bar, featuring armchairs and tufted leather couches, from noon til night.
Its main room can accommodate up to 170 seated diners or 200 for standing cocktail parties, and there exists a secondary bar and al fresco area for the exclusive use by smaller functions.
It has a smoker’s area for office Christmas parties that kick on into the night, flicks on the HD projector for embarrassing 21st birthday montages, and offers a kids’ menu for when your brother and his family are in town.
With wall-to-ceiling windows, tables stretching as far as the eye can see, soaring roof and dangling halo lights, The Black Stone is enormous – it’s also very thinly populated with guests on the chilly Thursday night we book, which is a shame. The curse of the Tasmanian off-season strikes again.
We dive into an ample wine list and ordered a Freycinet pinot noir each, but settle for a more modest drop once it was relayed to us our first choice was sold out.
We start with half-shell baked Tasmanian scallops served with XO butter and fried shallots ($26), and twice-cooked Meander Valley pork belly with caramelised apple and Spreyton cider sauce ($21 – a bargain for its ample size).
The scallops, presented handsomely on a bed of shells, come swimming in rich butter, a pool that swells once we squeeze lemon over them, and the fried shallots perch atop the small disc of meat like a wig. The scallops are firm but not rubbery, oceanic but not fishy, and the shallots offer textural variety. They are a winner.
The pork belly also nailed its landing. A generous hunk of meat with crisp crackle sits beside a browned half-apple, a pool of juice gathered in the hole where its core was. The cider sauce pours glossy and syruplike.
Beneath the skin is an inch-thick layer of supple fat, completed by a wide strip of flavourful meat. The acidity of the sauce cuts through the pork belly’s fattiness. The apple’s caramel flavours came through well but it remained slightly bland and underdone in its centre, which crunched rather than melted.
Our mains, char grilled chicken breast stuffed with feta and sun-dried tomatoes ($38), and Tasmanian wild clover lamb rump with chimichurri and garlic yoghurt ($45), were just as good.
The chicken, served with bacon, potato rosti and a slaw made vibrant by pickled onions and radishes, is smoky from the charred lines crisscrossing the breast and salty from the molten feta bubbling within. I don’t normally order chicken out – too passé, I feel – but this was a worthy offering to break my habit for.
The lamb, meanwhile, blushes pink like a debutante and the chimichurri is herbaceous and piquant, although I can’t detect much of the pinot jus advertised on the menu – I am not sure it needed it, with the ample garlic yoghurt and chimichurri.
I think their eponymous desert ‘The Black House’ looks divine – Thai-inspired banana coconut pudding, salted coconut bechamel and sweet cardamom dukka – but it is 8.10pm and the chefs are mopping. As a former hospitality worker throughout my university days, I know the pain of a lingering customer and I have determined ever since to never be one.
Our waitress fixes us up at the counter and says it has been a quiet winter for functions but that a few big bookings were on the horizon. I hope they go well for The Black Stone and they rake it in.
Hospitality is never easy. Everyone’s an armchair critic. But when you source Tasmanian produce, cook simple dishes with flair and consistency, and present them attractively on a plate, you give yourself every chance to go the distance.
The Black Stone Restaurant and Function Centre
2 Panorama Rd, Blackstone Heights
Opening hours: Wednesday–Saturday, 12–8.30pm. Sunday, 12–4pm.
On the menu
Baked Tasmanian scallops $26, Meander Valley pork belly $21, Tasmanian wild clover lamb rump $45, char grilled stuffed chicken breast $38, fried chat potatoes $11.
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