Piccalilly "The Relish" is now available in a 255 gram jar for you to take home! Perfect with cold meats, to garnish soups and anyhing else that requires a flavour boost! 

 

 

 

A romantic dinner demands something special: Food that you know has been prepared by someone who really cares. Prettiness helps, too - and lightness and finesse. Piccalilly wins on all those fronts. Owner/chef Iain Todd's dishes such as raw yellowtail kingfish enlivened with pickled radish and citrus soy sauce, a deceptively simple and pretty vegetable salad, chicken breast with legumes and lemon milk and pork shoulder with rich house-made pasta and sweet corn puree are a world away from everyday fare.

 

 

 From Qantas The Australian Way, Janurary 2009:

 

It’s rare for the opening of a new restaurant, especially by first-timers, to be as flawless as Piccalilly’s. Its standard of service sets a bar few other Hobart restaurants can match and talented young chef Iain Todd’s inventive dishes, which tread lightly on the plate, are quite different from anything else in town.

You select between four and eight dishes from a small plate menu of about 12 savoury and four sweet choices, which gives you plenty of options around just how substantial and how long you want your meal to be. Beautifully proportioned dishes, such as seared whiting fillet or dry-aged eye fillet with creamed leek and sautéed mushrooms. While Piccalilly was good from day one, it wasn’t perfect, but the best thing is that it keeps getting better. Today the wine list is much more interesting than it was originally and the house-made sourdough continues to get better. These small improvements augur well for Piccalilly to enjoy a long and stellar life.

 

 

     "Assiette is French for plate but behind the curved wooden door of an old sweet shop in Hobart it has acquired a new meaning, The young team at Piccalilly in Battery Point has Hijacked the word to describe a form of dining that is closer to grazing
The traditional entrée-main-dessert menu is replaced with lists of savoury and sweet dishes, each served with a compatible wine, if desired. It might be described as a more structured and sophisticated version of tapas
    Each dish is small but not tiny, allowing the diner to experience a wider range of flavours, textures and taste combinations. The menu offers a choice of four, five, six or eight-dish selections, with options for matched wines or beers (there’s a traditional three-course menu for unbending types.
    My dining companion Coco and I take the eight–dish degustation option ($120 per person) on the justification it is only $10 more than the six-dish selection and to properly experience the cuisine of Piccalilly’s young chef Iain Todd.
    Having taken the degustation route we shouldn’t be able to choose what dishes are included, However Coco’s desire for the Bruny Island oysters is such that manager Elysia Mannix relents and we are happy to sacrifice a salad. Before our selected dishes arrive we are delivered an amuse-gueule: sealed Longford beef with mustard emulsion and pickled shallots. A mere whisp of lean flesh and tang. It alerts our stomachs to the pleasures ahead. The eight Bruny Island oysters – four natural four with red wine and shallot vinaigrette- a large, fresh ad succulent they slide down, lubricated by a 2005 Killakanoon Vouvray, a smooth and slightly fruity chinin blanc bubbly ($9 a glass)
    Next is sashimi of yellowtail kingfish with pickled cucumber and yuzu vinaigrette it is such a work of art that we are reluctant to spoil the canvas, the ingredients are arranged with the precision of a classical Japanese drawing, delicate baby beetroot shoots taking the place of willow trees. The rawness of the fresh fish contrasts nicely with he tangy vinaigrette.
    With three of the eight dishes centered on seafood, we opt for a white wine to follow the bubbles. I have a glass of Velo pinot gris ($10) from the Tamar Valley in Tasmania’s north; it has a pinkish hue and vibrant passionfruit and peach flavours, Coco enjoys a glass of Home Hill Kelly’s Reserve Chardonnay ($10) from the Huon Valley.
    Our next dish is seared king george whiting fillet from South Australia with sauce vierge and citrus jellyfish. Wonderfully crisp, the fish is enlivened by tomato and herbs in the vierge and the tartness of the yuzu juice used to marinate the rehydrated dried jellyfish. The interval between plates is sufficient to savor each dish and rest before the next but there is time to contemplate the surroundings, particularly if you are lucky enough to be seated by the largest window.
    Piccalilly is on a street corner in Hampden Road, the high street of Hobart’s historic inner-city suburb of Battery Point. The building is interesting in itself; it’s wide front window and beautiful curved wooden front doors pointers to a past life. While a restaurant for many years preceding its incarnation as Piccalilly, it was once a sweet shop and the window by which we sit was no doubt started into longingly by countless children.
    The culinary art of Todd continues to dazzle with the arrival of pithivier of quail with walnut chutney and cauliflower puree. The pithivier, a type of shiny-crust pie, is superb, tender quail, puff pastry and the savoury influence of the walnuts and cauliflower combine to great effect.
    If chefs improve with age, Todd’s is a name worth watching. He trained in Melbourne at Mode in St Kilda and Fenix in Richmond ad well as Meadowbank Estate near Hobart before opening Piccalilly, he was sous chef at The Henry Jones Art Hotel on Hobart’s waterfront.
    The entire team at Piccalilly is a potent advertisement of the youth of Tasmania, Mannix Todd’s partner and restaurant manager, is 27, while the other staff members are even younger.
It certainly makes us feel old. Fortunately revival is on hand courtesy of a palate-cleansing chunk of watermelon dowsed in a balsamic gel.
    Of our four remaining dishes the first is roast boer goat loin from Rivendale Goat Stud at Cradoc in the Huon Valley. Once again the choice of accompaniment – a chilled yoghurt and cucumber salad – is perfect. This is the carnivorous end of proceedings and our final savoury dish is dry-aged Longford eye fillet with creamed leek and sautéed mushrooms, the upper tender meat is almost gamey, the leeks fit for a Welshman and the combination and the combination of hearty flavours simple but effective.
    Of our two sweet dishes, one in particular intrigues us. If some of Todd’s are art on china canvas, his mango eggs with candied brioche soldiers is installation art. Two chicken eggs have been hollowed and the contents used to make a rich custard. This serves as the replacement “egg white” while ultra-smooth mango puree serves as the “yolk”. The soldiers give the dish the appearance of an ordinary boiled egg breakfast.
    It’s hardly surprising that our last dish, blood orange and Pimms trifle, falls short of this sugar high, which surely exceeds anything offered at the original sweet shop. While not a patch on the trifle my nanna used to make, the Pimms evokes fond memories of English summers and backing the right horse at Royal Ascot. In Piccalilly, too, we have picked a winner."

 

 

               "Piccalilly is located in a rare and lovely small building in the Tasmanian capital's historic Battery Point precinct, a hop and a skip from the city's famous waterfront. More importantly for foodies, it's one of a handful, of Hobart restaurants that would stand comparison with the best in Sydney and Melbourne and surpass many of them in terms of welcome, service, wine list and yes, food. Chef lain Todd's menu sees a tapas-like offering of exquisite small (but not too small) helpings, each of singular originality and delicacy. Think handmade linguine with spanner crab and crisp beef cheek salad, aged eye fillet with leek pithiviers and piccalilli pickle, devilled lambs' kidneys with redcurrants, green peas and toasted breadcrumbs. The on dit used to be that Launceston had the best restaurants on the island. Not any more, it doesn't. And Elysia Mannix, Todd's partner, is the most affable hostess in town."

Leo Scofield, My Tasmania (The Mercury) April 26th 2008

"Last Saturday I dined at Piccalilly in Battery Point. Now, for over quarter of a century I reviewed restaurants for international and newspapers, and I'm here to tell you that in its class of simple, unpretentious restaurants run by committed individuals, Piccalilly, at the corner of Hampden Road and Francis Street is unmatched...adorable, smiling service...the food was terrific...pray that Hobartians are sophisticated enough to understand the quality establishment they have in their midst."

From the 'Best of the Best - Food' section in the April 2008 edition of Gourmet Traveller (page 177):