Sweet Envy Review, Hobart Tasmania

Sweet Envy Review, Hobart Tasmania

Many perceived Tasmania as a nature getaway with unforgettable sceneries and untouched national parks. However, many might not know that Tasmania is also a food haven. The love shape island has one of the best and freshest seafood in the world and also home to Tasmanian specialities such as scallop pies, leatherwood honey, black truffles, saffron, wasabi, extra virgin oil, cheeses beef and deep sea abalones. On top of the specialities, Tasmania also shares the love of desserts and coffee like other parts of Australia.

What will you get if you have desserts and coffee together? Sweet envy! Our little food adventure in Hobart started due to the cancellation of our kayaking session due to rough sea waters.

We were recommended by the locals to check out this lovely place called the Sweet Envy. It is located at 341, Elizabeth Street, North Hobart.

The café is indulged with white and decorated with classic wood furniture. The fresh looking café gave us a very refreshing and comfort ambience. We asked the permission to take photographs of the café as privacy laws in Australia are very strict and the owners of the café might be in the hot soup if pictures of the customers were taken without their consent. Hence, we also asked the consent of the customers before their pictures were taken.

What did we have in Sweet Envy? Alluring cupcakes, enticing cakes, colourful macaroons and great coffees!

We had the cupcakes first. We ordered three cupcakes and they are Lemon Delicious, Raspberry Surprise and Red Velvet.

In short, the cakes were soft and it went well with the toppings. We loved the colours and also the details of the toppings.

The Nutty Choux created like a masterpiece. This looks different than the usual choux. The two layered choux was a combination of sinful interesting ingredients. It was tastefully done and the combination of the ingredients was phenomenon.

It will be a pity if we didn’t try out their macaroons. There were so colourful and gracious!

The tea time will be incomplete if there were no coffees around.

Like we mentioned, there are great coffees to in Tasmania and Sweet Envy is one of them. We ordered a Black Coffee, Chiew’s favourite.

I ordered the Coffee Latte.

Mel ordered the creamy Chocolate Milkshake.

Overall we had great time savouring desserts in Sweet Envy and it was the work of pastry chef Alastair Wise. Alastair Wise is an award winning chef and has worked with Gordon Ramsay.

Alistair grew up in Hobart and started his apprenticeship in a local patisserie. Whilst an apprentice Alistair won both the National Bakery medal and Scholarship and the National Pastry Gold Medallist and International Pastry Team Member.

After moving to Melbourne and working in various Hotels, Alistair worked at Circa, the Prince where Michael Lambie gave him a recommendation to work for Gordon Ramsay UK. In London Alistair worked for Gordon Ramsay at Angela Hartnett at the Connaught.

Upon returning from the United Kingdom, Neil Ferguson (Allen and Delancey NYC) offered Alistair the opening of Gordon’s first New York Hotel and Restaurants, once opened Alistair received critical acclaim for his desserts and particularly his bonbon selection by the likes of Frank Bruni of the Times and the New Yorker.

Now based in Tasmania with partner Teena and daughter Matilda they have brought to life their own food destination, a specialised bakery called “Sweet Envy” in North Hobart offering old time sweets and confections lovingly crafted in small batches evoking the sweet memories of childhood with a modern twist on the premise that food is art. – Sourced from http://www.theagrariankitchen.com/The_Agrarian_Kitchen/the_teachers.html

It was unbelievable a dessert café in Hobart has such an admirable talent in their kitchen. We believe there are more eateries like this in Tasmania that yet to be discovered. Sweet Envy brought us smiles at the end of the day and what else we can ask for?