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St Helens is the Riviera of Tasmania - it enjoys the hottest climate and boasts the most days of sunshine. It is a seafood lovers paradise, even though the local population is only a shade over 2000. The Captain's Catch is situated in an idyllic setting right beside the sparkling clear waters of Georges Bay. Parking is a doodle even if you have a long rig and it's only a 5 minute walk back into town if you fancy sampling some Tasmanian ice cream for desert! |
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| You can sit on the verandah in the shade, or out in the open right beside the seaside. Pricing is way, way, way above the norm for Tassie - Blue Eye with chips $10.95 or Dory with chips for $8.95. In Stanley for instance, one can feed two for under these prices. Prawns were a very high $35.00 a kg. However, if you hunt around amongst the local fishermen, you can get crayfish etc. for around the $20.00 a kg mark (southern end of the harbour). |
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| So how did we fare? Sadly the chips were of the thin frozen variety and did nothing for us, bearing in mind that Tassie without doubt has the best spuds in the world and so many varieties. The fish was well and truly overdone with very thick batter being the only option offered. It turned out to be extremely greasy and indigestion inducing - thank heavens for Gaviscon. We may have got them on a bad day, so please email us if your experience is better than ours, or you just think we got it wrong and we will publish your comments here. Service however was friendly and first class, with a very nicely presented shop as can be seen from the photos below. We felt that closing at 5 PM weekdays and a very unrealistic 2:30 PM on weekends was rather silly for a tourist town. (reviewed in March 2004) Even on weekdays lunchtime cooking ceases at 2:30PM. |
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| The Paddle Wheel, a little bit along the wharf, had much better hours. Their take away is more keenly priced and they cook from 5:30PM onwards. There is wonderfull little fresh seafood shop that the locals use - we were tipped off by Steve the barber as it is just around the corner from his little shop! What a wonderful fellow - even invited us out to stay at his home at Four Mile Creek and extremely motorhome friendly. Wow - they know what they're doing though, and get our vote for the best in St Helens by a large margin. They only open during business hours and the shop is very easy to miss. In fact we had walked past it three days in a row and failed to notice it! Look for the little flag that says Fresh Seafood. So sorry folks, we just can't recommend the Captain's Catch, as it was too dear and just didn't meet up with our expectations for such a "fishy" place. Hema 55 F 14 |
