The best road-trip restaurants for the cuisine-curious
Whether road-tripping for culinary adventures or breaking up the drive, these destination diners turn a pit stop into an experience.
Homestead Restaurant, Piermont
Open to visitors and retreat guests, Piermont’s Homestead Restaurant is set in a 186-year-old heritage-listed homestead with views of Great Oyster Bay. The menu celebrates seasonal Tasmanian produce through thoughtful, Mediterranean-leaning dishes. Expect handmade pastas, just-caught seafood and veg-forward share plates like lamb backstrap with smoked tomatoes and eggplant curry, or charred asparagus with goat’s curd and sauce gribiche.
Tannin at the Tarkine Hotel, Corinna
It doesn’t get much more remote than Corinna’s Tarkine Hotel, a timber-clad tavern with no Wi-Fi or phone reception deep in the island’s north west. While mostly catering to guests at the Corinna Wilderness Village (cabins and camping spots are on offer), the restaurant welcomes all for lunch and dinner from mid-September to mid-May, when it’s open daily. Meals are hearty, with seafood pastas and thick steaks with lashings of béarnaise.
Oirthir, Bream Creek
Scottish husband-wife duo Bob Piechniczek and Jillian McInnes took over the former Van Bone site last summer, bringing house-made haggis and seaweed soda bread to Marion Bay with Oirthir (pronounced “oor-heid”). A set-menu-only offering reflects the pair’s French training – both have worked in Michelin-starred kitchens – but Tasmania is the real star here, with a focus on dishes that respect and enhance the natural bounty of Tasmania’s land and sea.
Hursey Seafoods, Stanley
This award-winning seafood restaurant recently had a refresh. Nab a window seat for views of Hursey’s bright-red fishing boats. Crayfish is the hero; order it by the whole or half with your choice of flavoured butters such as saltbush or garlic. With such beautiful surroundings, takeaway is a good shout. Take a seafood box stuffed with flake, scallops, calamari rings, prawns and fat chips to the water’s edge.
Le Coq, Bicheno
Bicheno’s status as one of the East Coast’s top holiday spots has been further cemented by the arrival of Le Coq. French-born chef Tristan Punelle’s menu blends influences from his homeland and local surrounds with a pan-Asian edge. Robbins Island beef skewers with gochujang mayonnaise, steamed market fish with nori and vadouvan and cannellini beans in mushroom XO are all standouts.
