| Address: | 10 Mary St, Cygnet |
| Phone No: | 03 6295 1966 |
| Web Site: | |
| Description: | Cafe |
| Comment: | Great food, variable service, small cafe, few tables. |
| Rita Rating: | *** |
Click links below (added on date shown) to read more . . .
Menulog Restaurant Guide for Lotus Eaters Cafe(added 2-1-2007)
Lotus Eaters (Rita Blog)(added 14-4-2007)
What's going on at Lotus Eaters? (Rita Blog)(added 1-12-2007)
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The following extract has been taken from an article by Graeme Phillips in the Sunday Tasmanian of 20 Jul 2008 entitled "It’s simply sublime".
Giselle Benton was a graphic designer and Alex Klimenko a chemical engineer in Sydney before they packed two cars and took off for Tasmania on impulse 17 years ago.
They first worked on a flower farm and in a fish factory before Giselle spent 10 years in the kitchen at Cygnet’s original Red Velvet Lounge.
They own the Lotus Eaters cafe in Cygnet - a cafe I described some time ago as the best in the state and have no reason since to change my opinion.
Neither of them is a trained chef. Alex says her Ukrainian mother and grandmother were both great cooks and she learned her love of Asian food growing up in the Sydney Vietnamese hub of Cabramatta.
With that background, it’s natural that she is the partner responsible for their curry pastes, sambals, relishes and blended chai.
Giselle spent her first 15 years in England and still remembers the food they used to eat when holidaying in France.
But most of all she remembers a salmon caviar timbale and a "mind-blowing" duck dish at Chris Manfield’s Paramount Restaurant in Sydney.
Alex’s cooking is the product of extensive research - the reason her Asian flavours are so good and authentic.
Giselle’s food is much more intuitive cooking by taste and feel.
"Not having a set menu at the Red Velvet or Lotus Eaters, it’s always been a matter of ’what are we going to cook today?’, so I quickly learned ," she says.
"Now there are people turning up all the time with fresh things from their gardens, making you continually think about what you can do with them. It gives us great freedom as well as continuing challenge."
"But, if you understand, appreciate a bay leaf for example, or listen to what each ingredient is saying, then you can put things successfully together," she says.
"We make everything from scratch, use all organic and free-range ingredients, never compromise, both love earthy, truffly flavours and we keep it simple. Too many places, I feel, overcomplicate things."
Simple, and quite often sublime.
GP
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