This was published 2 years ago
Huon Valley, Tasmania places to eat: Six of the best spots
By Andrew Bain
Willie Smiths Apple Shed includes a gorgeous display of almost 400 apple varieties.Credit: Tourism Tasmania
WILLIE SMITHS APPLE SHED
It was the Huon Valley that put the apples into the Apple Isle, and it's this cidery that has well and truly put apples back on the contemporary menu. The Grove shed features a restaurant and bar inside an old apple packing shed, with a large outdoor cider garden, enclosed with apple bins and an open-air wooden barn that's especially inviting in summer. The packing shed is bookended by an apple museum, including a gorgeous display of almost 400 apple varieties, and the workings of the Charles Oates apple brandy distillery. A produce market is held at the Apple Shed each Saturday. See williesmiths.com.au/apple-shed
RANELAGH
There's nothing generic about the Ranelagh General Store, which is now a dedicated, high-quality burger bar. Pick from an imaginative and ever-changing burger menu – choices might include the Dennis, with Tabasco sauce, parsley and aioli, and the Knuckle Sandwich, with pulled pork and kimchi slaw – and settle into the retro decor, which ranges from farmhouse to Formica. One of the Huon's other great simple eateries, the Summer Kitchen Organic Bakery, is just a few steps down the road. The bread is legendary. See ranelaghgeneral.store
ROADSIDE STALLS
The best shopping in the Huon isn't at a shop; it's in roadside stalls selling apples, berries and cherries, turning Huon Valley roads into virtual market aisles. In the hills behind Franklin, seek out Whispering Spirit in a wood cabin inside a farm shed. Besides farm produce, there are ice-creams with flavours such as lemon myrtle and mountain pepperberry, biscuits and spaetzle. At Huonville's edge, a simple stall at the sixth-generation Griggs property sells rubigold apples, a variety unique to this property. See southerntrove.com.au
SAILOR SEEKS HORSE
Named for a chance advertisement sighted in a Cygnet restaurant, Gilli and Paul Lipscombe's boutique vineyard opened a cellar door inside the refurbished and reinvented Port Cygnet Cannery at the end of 2020. With some uniquely Huon touches – check out the table made from an apple sorting machine – the timber-clad cellar door feels part warehouse and part inner-city wine bar. It opens for weekend tastings of the elegant pinot noirs and chardonnays grown on their eight-hectare vineyard a few minutes' drive away in Cradoc. See sailorseekshorse.com.au
MASAAKI'S SUSHI
Masaaki Koyama is almost universally described as creating Tasmania's best sushi – some say the best in the southern hemisphere – so the Geeveston eatery is unsurprisingly popular. Currently serving out of a food van, but also in the process of moving into the town's former Anglican church, the simple sushi seller opens at lunchtime on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, staying open only until sold out, which sometimes takes less than an hour. It's a Japanese pilgrimage in southern Tasmania. See masaaki.com.au
FAT PIG FARM
Gourmet by name, gourmet by nature, this Huon Valley farm, owned and run by Matthew Evans – aka the Gourmet Farmer – hosts Friday and Saturday long-table lunch feasts. Dishes are seasonal and straight from the farm's gardens and paddocks and come paired with fine Tasmanian wines, beers, ciders and spirits. The lunch sprawls through the afternoon, with courses broken up by tours of the 28-hectare farm near Cygnet. Winter warmers might include roast pork, while summers turn to greens plucked from the garden alongside distinctly Huon touches such as cider poached bacon. See fatpig.farm
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