Franklin Hobart – dinner at top rated restaurant in Tasmania and Australia

The Franklin Hobart restaurant is one that has received a lot of good press. It shows up in many listing of top restaurants in Tasmania and Australia. According to the Franklin website, they have received awards for being the number 1 restaurant in Tasmania and #6 in Australia.  We had to include it on our list of restaurants during our visit to Tasmania.

We were at Franklin Hobart for dinner. It is a minimalist type of place. It occupies a large space with lots of space between tables.  The floors are bare concrete as are the bar counter and some of the kitchen structures.  Looping house music with repetitious and barely audible vocals play in the background. The lighting is dim.  Yes its a ‘hipster restaurant’.

There is an open table where a large oven takes centre stage. A lot of the dishes are cooked in this wood fired oven.

There is a large room that was closed off. Presumably used for private events, I can imagine this being a very trendy space.

Franklin Hobart Menu

Anyway, back to the business of eating at Franklin Hobart.  There are not many dishes on the Franklin menu and there is a “Feed Me” option which sounds like an omakase type arrangement which costs A$85 per person. We decided to make our own selections.  Here are pictures of the menu and a page of the wine list.

Tasmania is well-known for their seafood. We had some oysters ($5 each) from Pipeclay Lagoon which is not far from Hobart. They were fresh and sweet.

Our other starter was crisp oyster head and saltbush dumpling ($4 each). The octopus content in the dumpling was not high but it was a tasty starter.

Wood roasted octopus with sweet and sour currants and smoked almond ($24). The long name describes it all. Octopus was mixed up with many kinds of flavours and crunchy textures. A nice dish that probably would have looked better if the lighting was brighter.

The best dish of the day was the roasted lamb with sprouting broccoli ($40). The lamb was tender and juicy. I think we enjoyed the vegetables even more.

Our final dish was the Cape Grim beef short rib with grilled radish ($36). The beef had been cooked a long time and waiting to fall off the bone. Would have been nice to have some steamed man tou to eat this with.

This was the wine that was recommended to us that evening. We were not particularly fond of it. Overall, the food at Franklin Hobart was good.  The restaurant atmosphere is a subjective thing. We prefer a brighter, cozier atmosphere but recognise that this sort of mod decor may appeal to some.

The portion sizes were small so be prepared to order more items than you usually would.  We could have ordered a few more items but chose not to as we spotted a tiny yakitori place on the way to Franklin and we decided to have round 2 of dinner over there. We will tell you more about it in a later post.

Ratings:
Food: 4
Service: 3
Value: 3
Atmosphere: 3
Overall Rating: 3 TOPs 

Opening Hours:
Tuesday to Saturday, 5 pm till late.

Franklin
30 Argyle Street
Hobart 7000 Tasmania
Australia