GLASS ALMOST FULL
THE GLASS HOUSE Main Deck, Brooke St Pier, Hobart Kitchen open noon to 10pm daily; bar open from noon. 6223 1032
The Glass House calls itself a bar first and a restaurant second. But it’s clear on this cold Friday evening that many punters are arriving at this handsome venue with an expectation of a restaurant experience.
Two years ago, the owners of Hobart’s luxurious Islington Hotel opened The Glass House amid much fanfare, with imported chef patron Ikuei Arakane overseeing the food with talented head chef Dong-Chui Lim. It soon cemented itself as one of Hobart’s most stylish top-shelf bars that also served nuanced and skilful food with a heavy bias towards the broad church that is Asian cuisine.
Dong-Chui Lim has moved on and David Ball is now at the helm, but Arakane remains The Glass House’s global ambassador.
The drinks list aims to cover as many bases as possible with cocktails, whiskies, Tassie pinots, sake and champers. It also caters for drinkers who like to keep their own bottle and set it aside under lock and key. This allows patrons to buy a bottle and keep it secure until their next visit.
The food menu is on the small side, comprising 12 dishes (in which seafood is well represented), cheese and two desserts.
An extensive list of cocktails features prominently. My dining companion enjoys a signature cocktail and we start our meal with six Blackman Bay oysters done with a compressed apple and champagne vinaigrette; coconut, pickled chilli and kaffir lime oil; and gin and tonic, lime and cucumber. All are delicious and fresh.
We opt for the sashimi and squid as entrees. The three waiters who attend our table are friendly, if a little rushed, but as the evening progresses we experience a whittling away of attention.
The sashimi, minimally garnished, appears promptly and we wait for the squid to accompany it. The tempo of the room lifts with the influx of customers and we assume the staff are just busy so we start on the sashimi, which is super-fresh and of excellent quality from Huon Aquaculture.
When it eventually arrives, the squid, though copious, has only a meagre lick of the promised tamarind sambal, and the garnish of torn cos, mint, coriander, bean shoots, cucumber and fried shallots seems clumsy, perhaps more at home in a pub punching above its weight than a polished gem such as The Glass House. I expected more finesse and refinement from a kitchen with this pedigree.
For main course, we choose mussels and pork belly, with a side of potatoes. The mussel dish is a beautifully rich, almost chowder-like liquid with botarga, Spring Bay mussels and potato. It is remarkably flavoursome.
The excellent side dish of fried potatoes, roasted garlic cream, Tuscan cabbage and pickled shallot arrives with the sticky pork belly. Sadly, the white beans accompanying the pork are quite underdone so I leave them. The pork is cooked well with a good depth of flavour but lacks the “sticky” element described.
We order both desserts: a ginger cake with chocolate ice-cream; and rhubarb with an aerated lemon-vanilla custard and rhubarb sorbet. Both are outstanding and easily the best things we eat all night.