Room For A Pony — Restaurant in Hobart

Being new to the Hobart dining scene, I scoured countless café menus before deciding upon Room For A Pony based upon their Hawaiian-inspired loco moco breakfast. Y’all know how I live to eat something different...

Located in North Hobart – an area touted as being similar to Sydney’s Newtown – it’s situated in a former petrol station. My flavour-seeking dining companion went diving for a bottle of chilli sauce as soon as we pulled up under a brightly coloured umbrella at a picnic table on their AstroTurf lawn. Turns out his fervor for additional flavour was unwarranted – Hobartians are much better at chilli than we Sydneysiders.

Loco Moco ($18) takes a tasty beef patty, plonks it on a mound of white rice, tops it off with two fried eggs, and then surrounds the lot with jalapeño gravy. The gravy was so good I’m itching for a recipe to be able to make it at home – it’d work on everything from turkey to fried chicken. And no extra chilli sauce was required!

Created in a wok, my Chinese Fried Chilli Omelette ($17) was also big on heat with both chilli jam and plentiful fresh red chilli slices. It was also served on steamed jasmine rice with dash of oyster sauce and both fresh and fried shallots. Eating rice for breakfast was surprisingly gentle and easy to digest in both cases. Worried about enough interest on the plate, I added on a side of Ziggy’s Free Range Bacon ($5), which was thankfully unnecessary, because it arrived incinerated in a sad little pile on the side of my plate.

Coffee was decent but not remarkable across both a Latte ($4) and a Flat White ($4). Staff were friendly, even in a big and busy space. Despite the tiny external face of these ex-garage station digs, you’ll find Room For A Pony could also fit a small horse inside too! This makes it perfect for breakfast no matter what Hobart's weather throws at you - though for me it was bright blue skies...

There are some places where the focus seems to be more on the presentation of the food than the actual taste, and unfortunately, that was the case here. I ordered the bacon cheese kimchi butty and an egg Benedict, with a rosti on the side just to try. I was really disappointed by the rosti, it fell apart easily and was far too soft. I understand a good rosti should be crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, but this one was barely holding together. For $4, I suppose it’s “worth a try,” but I had to force myself to finish it just to avoid wasting food. The choice of kimchi in the butty was also a very interesting one, in a bad way. I honestly think it was the worst kimchi I’ve ever had. The taste was really strange and just didn’t sit well with the rest of the dish.

When I arrived, I chose to sit indoors because it was very cold outside. The room temperature was warm and comfortable, but the space was quite loud with a lot of background noise. What surprised me more was that I sat there for a while without anyone noticing I had arrived, I felt invisible. Eventually, someone came over and asked if I wanted to start with a drink. I ordered a hot long black, and the staff member responded with a scoff and an odd look, which made me feel uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure if ordering a long black was somehow unusual here.

Thankfully, another staff member later on was very kind and offered great service, which I really appreciated.

Overall, while there were some positives, it’s not a place I would personally recommend. There are just too many little things that left me feeling...

After a recommendation we went to have breakfast and coffee. Great location with indoor / outdoor seating and great vibe. Good menu choice. Seated quickly, the waitress took our coffee order. A few minutes later at 11.30 a.m another waitress attended to us and took our breakfast order without writing anything down. Our coffees arrived a short time later and by 12.15 p m when still our food had not arrived, we politely asked where it was, to be informed no order had been put through for us. We had to reorder with a third waitress and our food eventually came out close to 1.p.m. The waitress who delivered it was the first one who took our initially coffee order, and I was asked of I'd like another coffee which I said yes. It wasn't written down again, and about 15 mins later after it hadn't arrived I decided to settle up and leave. I asked a guy serving us at checkout about the 2nd coffee ordered, and was told there was no order for another coffee placed. The wait service was very ordinary, the girls were young and couldn't retain any order information especially when not writing any orders down.

On a positive, the Chinese Chilli Omelette was amazing. The flavour and food was delicious. Thanks to the chef. Definitely room for improvement in relation to attention to detail by wait staff to avoid missing orders and having disgruntled customers. Thanks though for having us and the wonderful omelette. At least a positive came out of...