A bottler of a day!

The wonderful thing about this time of year in this part of Southern Tassie is the amazing amount of fruit available. Right now I am preserving nectarines, peaches, apricots & cherries. I’ll also be making raspberry & blackberry jams to complement the vanilla apricot jam & strawberry & rosewater jams we have already made. Look out for the fruit cordials & preserved lemons we’ll have available soon. Later in the year we’ll have Passata available from out own tomato plants.

Karen picked up some ace apricots just this side of Huonville, half of which I preserved, the rest went into jam. This might go well in our yeasty jam doughnuts that we serve on the weekends but I am holding out for the raspberries personally!

Like sentinels they stand, Leatherwood preserved Franklin nectarines & vanilla preserved Sorrell Apricots

We made use of the Fowlers Vacola method to the letter!


These little beauties are made from Cygnet Strawberries & rosewater how more local can you get!?

Vanilla apricots & yes I will pack them tighter next time!

Come on down & taste our region in a bottle!
Cheers Steve & the team

Cygnet Folk Festival 2009

Wow what a festival!
Three days & nights when Cygnet bulges tenfold with people & we go from being busy into hyper-drive! The whole town is energized & without sounding too ‘New Agey’, is full of good will & positive energy.
We were swamped from the get-go by waves of excited festival customers from the first encouraging waves on Friday morning building to the tidal mass of Saturday & Sunday finally the lapping at our feet by Monday morning.
To our staff Nigel, Jenna, Michelle, Kaye, Steph, Sally, Ben, Kate, Imke, Ben T, Kira, Leah, Joe, Tasha, Cate, Dave & Emma, thank you for your smiles & all your hard work.

Old School chips!

Yes in an age where most cafes cut the top of a bag of generic chips before dumping them into the fryer, we dont.
In fact we get our Tasmanian Pink Eyes from Malcolm Dance in Middleton. We wash them, chip them & blanch them in low temp oil befor frying them to a golden crispness for each order.
Aren't all chips from potatoes you ask might ask reasonably? Well, yes they are of course,
but how many places can actually lay claim to coming from the area they are served in, yet alone go to the apparent trouble of actually making them?

We at The Red Velvet Lounge would like to put this question to any other cafe not only in Tasmania but Australia as well!

On another note, soon we will be doing very special dinners on Friday & Saturday evenings. By this we mean really local & unique foods to this area, food that you cant get anywhere else!

Yep, Friday & Saturdays evenings at the RVL will soon be real special!

see you soon

Cheers Steve & the team