The Business Traveller’s Guide to Hobart
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Mixing business with pleasure in Hobart isn't a tough ask, especially with a food scene that serves up sophisticated, serious food with a hearty hospitality. A business lunch can easily be bookended with a little sightseeing and, thanks to the city's easily navigable size, you'll be back in time for client drinks. Here's how the well-heeled do Hobart.
The best restaurants
Berta
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Head to this CBD café for breakfast or a casual lunch. It’s a narrow space but it’s flooded with light and the food is far from the standard morning fare. The spring onion pancake with sticky pork belly, fried egg and radish salad or Mediterranean breakfast plate are flavour- packed and filling, while the Veneziano coffee alone is worth the visit.
The Glass House
It’s hard to beat the view at this waterfront restaurant, where chef David Ball serves up dishes crafted from whatever his Tassie producers brought in the door that morning – think baby kohlrabi with line-caught bluefin, mustard and cultured cream and local burrata with asparagus, mustard and brioche crumbs. Also perfect for a pre-dinner glass of local sparkling and olives.
Evolve Spirits Bar at Macq01
The award-winning, moodily lit drinking den Evolve Spirits Bar has an extensive selection of Tasmanian, local and international spirits (with tasting notes) and an equally extensive collection of actual fossils. Regular visitors can purchase one of the rarer bottles and have the bar keep it for personal consumption.
Things to do
Boat cruise
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Experience this water-centric city on a 2.5-hour Iron Pot cruise, heading past sea cliffs, kelp forests and the nation’s oldest lighthouse. The jet boat seats 12 and your guide can field almost any question on Hobart’s maritime history.
Mawson’s Huts
For a taste of Antarctica – minus the cold – wander through Mawson’s Huts, replicas of those that served as the base for Sir Douglas Mawson’s 1911-14 expedition. (The originals still stand in Cape Denison, East Antarctica). The replica huts are built on the central waterfront, 200 metres from where Mawson departed.
Best accommodation for business
Macq01
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Find a room
Watch the harbour’s busy scene unfolding outside or get busy making use of the facilities inside this sleek hotel – there’s free wi-fi, an in-house gym, three popular bars and the Old Wharf Restaurant, with its focus on local produce. Many of the city’s best cafés and diners are within walking distance and the hotel’s storytelling theme offers a crash course in the history of the region.
SEE ALSO: The Best Restaurants in Hobart