Catherine R.
Yelp
Fantastic location, spectacular views, but above all, delectable, luscious local dishes.
I was looking for a fine dining restaurant in Hobart to finish a lovely trip in Tasmania and found the menu of Aloft the most appealing from a selection of highly recommended establishments. I tried to reserve (several weeks in advanced), but was disappointed to find all the seating booked. I assumed that spots at the typically highly sought-after Chef's Table would be gone too, instead there seemed to be plenty of spaces! What a bonus! According to Chef Glen, this is a typical quirk in Hobart where seats at the Kitchen Bar are slower to fill. Perhaps this is assumed that there may be no view with these seats. While the seating is further back, we still enjoyed the beautiful water view from our lofty stools. Only the banquet menu is available for seats at the kitchen bar. This would be our choice regardless, but my goodness, was that tasting menu good!
Masterstock pig's ears - I would travel to Hobart just for these. Egg custard, crab, ginger - excellent, with incredibly subtle dehydrated ginger. Lovely prawn and fig leaf, nice black pepper pork belly. The mushroom dumpling was fine, though larger slices of wood ear in the filling would provide that satisfying firm chew that is wood ear. But here, the menu again takes flight. The blue eyed cod (apparently a by-catch), sprinkled with dehydrated egg (perhaps seems strange) was perfection. A genius matching of flavours and faultless cooking. This is unexpectedly surpassed by the magnificence of the koji beef. A new food preparation experience for me, it was explained that the beef is briefly fermented in koji (used in sake, soy sauce, miso etc), before a laborious and careful process of multiple flash fire grilling. Sorry, best edited description I can provide. The result is flavour and texture I have not yet experienced - incredibly tender, though concurrently maintaining a firmness/structure in the bite. It now makes other comparable sous vide meat seem like an elementary, pasty cheat.
The finale for us was the sable and condensed milk ice cream with coffee toffee. This was a luscious ice cream with toffee on a bed of shave 'sable'. What was the process of making the shaved sable? I don't know. The sable was a mouth melting, pencil shaving of what tasted like freshly baked, smooth as silk digestives. My husband never orders desserts, has taken an occasional spoonful of my dessert after firm badgering. On this occasion, he ate half of the dessert. It was very good.
Exceptional food. Thank you
