Artful Lodger: Hobart - Harper's BAZAAR (Copy)
Hobart’s haven of art and history the Henry Jones Art Hotel has upped its luxe factor — and opened two of the city’s most hyped dining concepts to boot. By Alexandra English
The first time the heating came on in the Henry Jones Art Hotel, the walls started to bleed. A thick red liquid dripped down the sandstone and brick. Guests were terrified, but the staff weren’t surprised. See, for a century, the string of warehouses that now comprise Henry Jones Art Hotel were home to the IXL Jams factory. The buildings remained abandoned for nearly 30 years until 2004, when they were sold, joined, scrubbed, polished and turned into a boutique hotel named for Jones, the owner of IXL. When the heaters were cranked up on that first wintry night, the 100-year-old crystallised jam residue melted, running down the walls in strawberry-red globs.
Our host may have just used science to prove the hotel I am about to sleep in isn’t haunted, but I’m not so sure. This place contains so much history it is almost palpable: a warehouse and red-light tavern for whalers and fishermen; a jam factory; a derelict squatters’ haven; an abandoned playground and studio space for the arts students next door; a 52-room, four-suite boutique hotel. Convicts laid the sandstone you rush past in the hallways; they elevated, without machinery, the steel beam that runs the length of the building. The landowner and jam factory founder, George Peacock, who hired convicts in order to give them life skills rather than punishment, lived in what is now the Peacock Terrace with his wife, Margaret, and seven children; the rickety spiral staircase (Tasmania’s oldest) they used to access the door below is visible behind glass, and a patch of their wallpaper has been preserved in the main bedroom. A grand staircase made from local blackwood leads to the spectacular H. Jones Suite, which is now sought after by honeymooners but was once the stately boardroom where Jones would bring clients to intimidate and terrorise them.
Everywhere you look, there is evidence of the warehouses’ previous lives, but this hotel is by no means run down — the Federal Group (the team that also parents the MACq 01 and Saffire Freycinet) brought on architect Robert Morris-Nunn to carefully preserve the factory while adding the most modern of features: think overflowing infinity spas in living rooms, huge televisions, glass-walled bathrooms and king-sized beds draped with silk covers. The result is the first dedicated art hotel in the southern hemisphere, which has a collection of some 500 artworks by emerging and established Tasmanian artists adorning the walls. (A word to the wise: make time for an art and history tour of the hotel, a glass of champagne in hand, with art liaison Emine Lewis and history liaison Greg Ball.)
In the nation’s new food capital (sorry, Melbourne), there are seemingly a million hole-in-the-wall, bespoke, artisanal, farm-to-table options, but within the confines of the Henry Jones you’ll find some of the best food Tasmania has to offer. As part of the $1.7 million upgrade to the hotel’s rooms, two restaurants have been introduced.
Cocktail hour kicks off with live jazz in the IXL Long Bar. While the pianist tinkles the ivories, get acquainted with the drinks menu: here you’ll find one of the largest collections of Tasmanian whisky and gin in the state, whisked, shaken and stirred by head bartender Ash Turner, whose cocktails are garnished with produce from the hotel’s herb garden. When your inner dinner-bell chimes, mosey over to Peacock and Jones, a cavelike dwelling tucked into the corner of the hotel’s impressive atrium. Those who love the spectacle of cooking are in for a good show thanks to the restaurant’s open kitchen, while architecture and history buffs will relish the convict-carved sandstone walls and exposed rough-hewn timber beams. Head chef Jeff Workman, of Saffire Freycinet fame, crafts an ever-changing à la carte menu featuring locally sourced meat and seafood, and veggies from the garden. Within the pages of your hide-bound menu, you’ll find dishes such as lamb shoulder with pumpkin, pepitas and nutmeg; crispy school prawns with squid ink aioli; and grilled wallaby, suet pudding and roasted eschalot, served on earth-toned tableware.
Night two is reserved for Landscape Restaurant & Grill, a moodier destination with a collection of colonial-era John Glover paintings. The menu of reimagined classics — instead of steak and fries, think Cape Grim sirloin and duck-fat chips — is by executive chef Alex Katsman and made on the powerhouse asado grill, where whisky barrels are fired to add to the smoky flavours. (The restaurant goes through 15–20 tonnes of whisky-infused wood every year, which shows how well the local industry is doing.) In-house sommelier Louis Kesur has curated the perfect wine-pairing menu.
Filling the hours between dinners with more delicious food is easy in Hobart, especially on a Pennicott Wilderness Journeys Seafood Seduction cruise: a full-day gourmet outing that launches from Constitution Dock (a short walk from the Henry Jones) and travels down the River Derwent. We anchor in a sheltered cove near Bruny Island and indulge in a 10am glass of chilled Jansz while one of the divers gears up to fetch lunch. Yes, while we watch the morning sunlight scatter over the water, our diver is below the surface collecting oysters, abalone and cray sh. He shucks and cooks the seafood as we toast with another glass of wine. And then we eat. For hours, we eat. It is glorious, but be warned: after this cruise, nothing else will ever taste fresh again. In fact, after a Tasmanian culinary sojourn, nothing ever tastes quite the same.
This story originally appeared in the April 2019 issue of Harper’s BAZAAR.
Photography by Adam Gibson
