This Hobart Italian restaurant is one to add to your must-eat list
With excellent service and well-priced dishes that celebrate both Italy and Tasmania, this standout eatery – tucked inside one of the city’s hotels – comes highly recommended, writes Alix Davis
Food and Wine
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If a trip to Italy isn’t on your holiday bingo card this year, you could do worse than spend a few very pleasant evenings at some of Hobart’s standout Italian restaurants. Of course, you’ve got high-profile eateries including Fico, Peppina, Pitzi and Templo but one that might have flown under your radar is Tesoro, located in the Movenpick Hotel. I recommend adding it to your must-eat list immediately, whether you’re planning an Italian sojourn or not.
Helmed by head chef Glen Tilly, Tesoro presents classic Italian flavours with Tasmanian flair. Assisting Tilly is sous chef Ruggero Cafagna, who hails from Puglia, the heel of Italy’s boot. Cafagna’s passion for food, good ingredients and Italian cuisine is infectious and a meal here is a delicious combination of Italy and Tasmania.
We elect to take “the road trip” ($95 per person) for a four-course gastronomic tour of Tasmania’s produce. Our meal begins with a pillowy puffed bread served with a richly hued butter flavoured with nduja and sun-dried tomatoes ($12). Nduja is a spicy pork paste (or a very soft salami) from the region of Calabria and has a gentle kick to it, while the bread is made from Tesoro’s own sourdough starter, crafted five years ago when the restaurant first opened. We tear open the bread and dive in.
It wouldn’t be a Tasmanian road trip without oysters ($5.50 each), and here they’re served two ways – baked with crispy pancetta and spicy nduja or raw with a granita of limoncello from Amalfi and Italian prosecco. Cafagna says he was horrified when it was first suggested that oysters be paired with pancetta and nduja, but after tasting them, he was a convert. He’s not claiming it’s an Italian dish (“oysters are more of a French thing”), but we agree that it’s delicious, especially for those of us (ahem, my husband) who are not necessarily fans of a raw mollusc. A dish of imported bresaola ($15) completes the entrees – air-dried, salted beef that’s a traditional dish of Lombardy, in Italy’s north. It’s sliced paper-thin and paired with mascarpone spiked with Tasmanian horseradish.
If you’re looking for something more casual, there are also pizzas on the menu ($26-27) – bases are made from the same sourdough starter and they’re cooked in the red-hot pizza oven that’s part of the restaurant’s open kitchen. There are many varieties of pizza crust, Cafagna tells me, and different people like different styles, but he’s very confident in Tesoro’s pizza, and I make a mental note to try it on our next visit.
Pasta is, of course, a key component of Tesoro’s menu, and Cafagna is thrilled to be working with a Nepalese chef who has turned his skill at making momo (traditional Nepalese dumplings) to pasta, with great results. We enjoy a bowl of gnocchi – made the traditional Pugliese way with just semolina and water – served with a simple yet rich tomato sauce ($36). Cafagna tells us this sauce is exactly how his mother makes it, and he couldn’t be happier to be using Tasmanian-grown tomatoes. Italy’s volcanic soil is known for producing outstanding, flavourful tomatoes and he says the soil here reminds him of home. The dish (which can also be served with linguine) comes topped with creamy stracciatella, one of my favourite fresh cheeses.
Other pastas on the menu (all $36) – casarecce with pork and fennel sausage, mushroom pappardelle – also sound excellent.
A quick tour of the kitchen gives me the chance to peek into a huge pot of beef and pork ragu, which Cafalda tells me is their most popular dish and is simmered for six to eight hours before being served over hand-cut pappardelle.
That’s not the only dish that gets the slow cooking treatment – our main of beef short rib ($48) is cooked for 16 hours and is fork tender, served on a bed of creamy polenta with braised fennel. It’s the perfect winter dish – warming and full of flavour.
Tiramisu is one of Italy’s best-loved and most famous desserts. I’d always assumed it was a traditional recipe, passed through culinary history, but Cafagna tells me it was invented by pastry chef Roberto ‘Loli’ Linguanotto in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Linguanotto died in July last year and Tesoro’s version is a tribute, made in the classic way, without any whipped cream. A hint of Cointreau adds a little taste of orange, “yes, I know, it’s French,” says Cafagna, with a shrug and a smile.
With excellent service and well-priced food that showcases both Italy and Tasmania, Tesoro is one to add to your list today.
TESORO
28 Elizabeth St, Hobart
Opening hours:
Dinner from 5pm
On the menu:
Pizzette bread, $12; Tasmanian oysters with limoncello and prosecco granita, $5.50; wagyu bresaola, $15; Linguine pomodoro with stracciatella, $36; beef short rib with soft polenta, $48; tiramisu, $16
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