TasWeekend: Cool Hobart eatery, In the Hanging Garden, is easy to get hung up on
DarkLab and Mona’s successful CBD space has reopened just in time for summer. Amanda Vallis gives her verdict.
Taste Tasmania
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THE team at DarkLab have proved time and time again that they are capable of pulling off what us mere mortals would deem impossible.
Through Dark Mofo, they have made Hobart a must visit destination in the middle of winter, when not so long ago it was the time of year that the rest of Australia avoided us like the plague.
They gave us the nude swim, the winter feast, thought-provoking art installations and — importantly — bragging rights for all Tasmanians. We’re cool now. We do brave and ground-breaking things that the rest of Australia can’t, and we owe this largely to DarkLab and Mona.
At this year’s Dark Mofo festival DarkLab — in conjunction with Riverlee and Fender Katsalidis Architects — launched In The Hanging Garden.
Located in the centre of town for all to enjoy in a what was a previously disused parking lot space, the precinct was transformed in to an open-air auditorium-like space.
The space was closed after this year’s festival, but since then it’s undergone further transformation behind closed doors and has now reopened in time for the summer season.
The reopening signals the beginning of a new series of events dubbed “Good Fridays” — a weekly Friday night garden party complete with food and DJs to help you relax into a summer time state of mind.
There are two new food and beverage operators now on offer too, Oryza by Ian Chan and Leng Chung (the former owners of cult Malaysian eatery MYU Easy Bites), and La Sardina Loca, a Basque-country inspired pintxos bar delivered by Kif Weber and Josh Carver of Suzie Luck’s (formerly Smolt at Salamanca).
We arrive on the Sunday afternoon of opening weekend and the space is buzzing with activity. It’s a frosty November day in Hobart, so staff are busy lighting the log fire in the covered space with tables near the food stalls.
We find a table easily and have a great view over the dog-friendly Cathedral lawns with an 18m tall cathedral structure towering above. The lawns are decked out with bean bags and chill-out areas with lots of room for kids to run around.
From the Oryza window, we order lamb dumplings with smoked eggplant sauce and a fried chicken rice bowl. From La Sardina Loca we order a some pinchos (a mouthful); and a variety of tapas (small plates) including olive pepper and white anchovy sticks, potato and manchego croquetta; green pea, broad bean, fetta, oregano and chorizo; pepper and spiced tomato and patatas bravas.
Our tapas arrives presented on a large wooden board with plenty of crunchy sliced bread for vital mopping-up purposes. I do love a good platter, and I like that the tapas nature of the menu allows us to create our own consisting of exactly what we feel like.
Dishes are simple and delicious. The broad bean, pea and fetta concoction is fresh and light (perfect scooped over bread), while the chorizo, pepper and spiced tomato is dense and filling with generous chucks of chorizo sprinkled with verdant flat leaf parsley.
The patatas bravas get their own plate and they are perfectly crispy crushed pink-eyes served with Ajo Blanco (a creamy almond-based sauce). Larger plates on offer include PX braised beef cheek with charred onion and kale ($20).
Our lamb dumplings from Oryza are out of this world good. Generously portioned and slathered with smoked eggplant sauce and sprinkled with shallots, this is a dish I would come back for again and again.
The fried chicken rice bowl is also an absolute dream, with perfect sliced crispy chicken, a dollop of fragrant yellow rice and then a vibrant pineapple sambal to boot. There is nothing I don’t love about this food.
Drinks-wise, La Sardina Loca offers beer from Two Cities Brewing and a mixture of Tasmanian and Spanish wines.
There are also vermouth and cocktail options along with some interesting softies like burnt orange soda ($6) and salted lemon lime soda ($6).
From Oryza there are Tassie wines and more interesting non-alcoholic options like chrysanthemum and lemon soda ($4) or passionfruit green tea ($4), with the option to add vodka if you wish (extra $8).
And look out for Van Diemen’s Land Creamery and Eden Pantry slinging ice-cream cones in The Cathedral area as the weather starts to warm up.
With an impressive summer music program and food this good, I plan to come back again and again.
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