An L-shaped, three-storey red-brick motor inn that seems forever stuck in the 1980s probably isn’t where you’d think to find what has, in only a matter of years, become one of Tasmania’s most talked-about regional restaurants. Settle into one of the vinyl banquet chairs in The Waterloo Inn’s 35-seat time warp of a room, however, and you’ll come to realise the place just wouldn’t resonate the same way anywhere else.
Advertisement
Wife-and-husband team Alex Sumner and Zac Green took over the space in the twilight of 2021, and with the exception of some irreverent artwork, a pair of speakers and a few Chesterfields, it remains exactly as it was four decades ago. The couple are – and have always been – the only full-time employees. Despite a total lack of hospitality experience, Sumner oversees the front of house, and she’s a natural, armed with the rare ability to put you at ease in an instant. Green stands alone in the kitchen, having spent seven years in Melbourne at the flagship MoVida in Hosier Lane.
The fish of the day crudo at The Waterloo Inn
On an unseasonably warm autumn night, a band of unsuspecting retirees might stumble through in search of fish and chips or a grill-marked rump, misled by the old “Steak & Seafood Restaurant” sign still hanging above the front door. What they’ll get instead will likely come as a surprise. To begin, it could be creamy chunks of local crayfish atop crunchy focaccia adrift in a lake of tarragon-fragrant bisque. To follow, perhaps hunks of braised rabbit tossed through mafaldine sloshing in a brothy sauce, sharpened by smoked pancetta and fried rosemary.
When restaurants revel in kitsch and nostalgia like this, the food sometimes gets caught up in its own doily-lined, CWA-induced irony and cleverness. Green’s disarmingly simple, refreshingly unselfconscious menu – just 10 items – does the opposite. Here, a bowl of fried pink-eye potatoes isn’t trying to be anything other than a bowl of fluffy spuds, accentuated with black pepper aïoli. The same goes for roasted hakurei turnips daubed in sweet and sour sauce or a marvellous culatello, each house-cured and hammy-sweet slice as slick as Vaseline.
To reach The Waterloo Inn from Launceston or Hobart requires 90 minutes in a car, so spending the night is wise, not least because it allows you to survey the local tap beers and 40-odd largely natural wines with intent. Given the short jaunt to bed, it also demands you say yes to the only dessert, which will be a no-nonsense sticky date pudding with a scoop of whisky ice-cream if you’re lucky.
A line up of wines at The Waterloo Inn
Upstairs, meanwhile, some of the hotel’s rooms – most of which offer knockout views over Great Oyster Bay – have been given thoughtful updates, while others remain resolutely fossilised. There isn’t a wrong choice, but if you want to honour this quirky, time-worn TARDIS to the fullest, there is definitely a right one.
Anna Critchley
