Coasting for service

Spent last weekend visiting Swansea and sampling Ebb's finest. The food was very impressive, and, not to be too "up myself" with this, but it really wasn't your expected country tucker. The menu, ingredients, service and prices were Hobart standard.

Maybe it was somewhere like Meadowbank that started this trend (that is, the trend of restaurants outside the city boundaries serving great food) some years ago and it's fantastic to see it extending everywhere - to so many pockets of Tassie, so you are continually surprised at finding one of these "treasures" somewhere.
Often it's just one dish that you find a restaurant does to your own personal specifications. I found that in Burnie the other night. At the motel I stayed in, I had the very best Seafood Chowder I've had anywhere, any time. I have to confess to being a Seafood Chowder freak, and anywhere I go if it's on the menu, it's a no-brainer!
Till the Burnie experience, my very favourite chowder venue has been Peppermint Bay's Chowder. Every time I'm down the Channel, I pop in for my chowder "fix". After that, I'm anyones!

Anyway, to revert to Swansea, during my chat with David Siepen (one of the proprietors of Ebb), we got to talking about staffing, and the dire shortage thereof. David reckons that he could start a Hospitality School up there at Swansea with no lack of takers. I think he's onto something there. Darryl Gerrity (Mayor of the West Coast) wants a Mining School over on the West Coast too. Both eminently sensible ideas which would help out with the skills and staff shortages we are constantly hearing about.

With the standard of hospitality being consistently raised by places like Ebb, we desperately need good reliable staff in these outlying areas to carry it on, not staff who are up the coast getting the much needed drying out time from their alcohol or drug addiction, which seems to be the norm there at the moment.