The Best Fish and Chips in Tasmania, From Hobart to Stanley

The best fish and chips in Tasmania span waterfront institutions like Mures and Flippers in Hobart, Doo-Lishus on the Tasman Peninsula, Freycinet Marine Farm on the East Coast and Hursey Seafoods in Stanley. Across the island, the equation stays pleasingly simple: local fish, hot chips, somewhere near the water and a very real chance of a gull watching the whole transaction.

Tasmania is unusually good at this meal because the distance between boat and fryer can be wonderfully short. One day it is gummy shark eaten from paper beside a working harbour; the next, scallops at a roadside seafood van or fish and chips with vineyard wine overlooking Freycinet. The settings change, but the best versions have the same essentials: fish that still tastes of the sea, batter with a proper crackle and chips worth fighting over.

From Hobart’s floating punts to Stanley’s fishing-family kitchens, these are the best fish and chips in Tasmania to plan a salty little detour around.

The Best Fish and Chips in Hobart & Southern Tasmania

Hobart does fish and chips with the harbour right there beside you. At Constitution Dock, floating seafood punts send out flathead, flake, scallops and blue grenadier metres from the water; around Victoria Dock, fishing boats still come in beside restaurants buying from the fleet. Behind it all, kunanyi rises over the rooftops, Sammy the seal sometimes appears below and gulls make their own arrangements around lunch. Further south, old-school chippies, oyster farms and roadside seafood stops keep the whole thing beautifully elemental.

Mures Lower Deck

Mures Lower Deck has earned its place in Hobart’s fish-and-chip canon the long way. George and Jill Mure opened the original Fish House in 1973, then built their own fishing boat when the seafood supply wasn’t good enough. That hook-to-plate idea still drives the family business today, with blue grenadier and other Tasmanian catch coming straight from Mures’ own vessels to the fryer. Order at the counter, take it to the dock and let fifty years of local habit do the rest.

Victoria Dock, Franklin Wharf, Hobart 

Flippers Cooked Seafood

Flippers is the Constitution Dock order that still feels quintessentially Hobart. The floating punt serves battered flake and flathead, crumbed blue grenadier, trevalla, scallops and calamari through the window, with fisherman’s baskets built for anyone unwilling to choose just one thing. Take the paper parcel to the benches out front, keep one eye on the gulls and the other on the boats coming and going through the harbour.

1 Constitution Dock, Hobart 

Fish Frenzy

Fish Frenzy has been feeding Elizabeth Street Pier since 1998, with 70 seats inside, another 70 outside and Hobart’s working port spread out beyond them. The order to know is the namesake Fish Frenzy: crumbed blue grenadier and pink ling with scallops, calamari and chips, though Tasmanian flake can be done in beer or tempura batter. Time magazine once called it “arguably the best fish and chips in Australia”; nearly three decades on, locals are still queueing at the waterside counter.

Sullivans Cove, Elizabeth Street Pier, Hobart 

Southside Yo

Southside Yo has kept the old South Hobart fish-and-chip-shop spirit alive, only with better coffee and a much broader menu around it. Fish and chips for one comes with lemon and tartare, the snack pack adds calamari, and the potato cakes have their own little following. Gluten-free diners are especially well looked after, with locals calling out the fish and scallops as a rare easy win. Family-owned, open until 8pm and still resolutely neighbourhood in feel.

402 Macquarie Street, South Hobart

Tasmanian Gourmet Seafoods

Tasmanian Gourmet Seafoods is the airport detour with trophies in the cabinet and lobster tanks by the dining room. The Cambridge seafood retailer and restaurant has collected multiple Tasmanian fish-and-chip titles, plus national honours, with gummy shark, blue-eye trevalla, scallops and Southern Rock Lobster moving through the kitchen from Tasmanian waters. Order the fish and chips, or try the pepperberry squid if it’s on, then inspect the live lobster tanks before deciding lunch has finished.

50 Loop Road, Cambridge

Barilla Bay Oyster Farm

Barilla Bay is worth the airport detour for the oysters alone, grown in the farm below the restaurant and sold fresh from the retail shop every day. Upstairs, the menu goes well beyond a token fish-and-chips plate: local seafood lands beside tomato-spiced chips, while oysters come natural, Kilpatrick, with Korean chilli jam or under a Tasmanian cheese mornay. For full excess, the seafood platter folds in a dozen oysters, prawns, smoked salmon, squid, scallops and fish. Delicious doesn’t even begin to cover it.

1388 Tasman Highway, Cambridge

Kraken Fish and Chips

Kraken Fish and Chips is the North Hobart chippy with a devoted gluten-free following. The kitchen runs a dedicated GF fryer and separate prep, so blue grenadier, flake, flathead, prawns, squid, potato cakes and even dim sims can all be ordered without the usual cross-contamination worry. The Kraken’s Basket is the move when choosing feels unnecessarily restrictive: crumbed grenadier, prawns, squid, chips and a potato cake in one paper-lined haul.

Re-opens mid-September

293 Elizabeth Street, North Hobart

The Best Fish and Chips in Launceston & the Tamar Valley

Launceston’s fish-and-chip geography is a little stranger than Hobart’s, which is part of the fun. Here, the North and South Esk fold into the kanamaluka/Tamar, the water runs tea-dark with tannins from peaty soils, and lunch can happen on the Seaport boardwalk before a walk into Cataract Gorge or further north among vineyards, orchards and old river towns.

The fish-and-chip stops follow that landscape beautifully: polished waterfront plates in the city, neighbourhood shops in Invermay and Trevallyn, then old-school seafood counters as the estuary widens towards George Town and Beauty Point. This is northern Tasmania by paper parcel and tartare sauce, with a glass of Tamar Valley sparkling never too far away.

Boatyard

Boatyard looks across one of Australia’s oldest slip yards, with the Tamar and Cataract Gorge catching the last light beyond the deck. The kitchen keeps fish and chips simple but specific: local pink ling in Boags beer batter with fries, salad and tartare, plus Boomer Bay oysters and daily sashimi if lunch starts expanding. Wednesday is the smart play, when the fish-and-chip special drops to $28.

13 Park Street, Launceston

Salt on Tamar

Salt on Tamar keeps things focused: fresh fillets, crunchy batter and chips cooked to that sweet spot between fluffy and crisp. Flake is the regular order, but the potato cakes have become their own minor obsession with locals, praised for a brittle shell and soft middle. The seafood basket pulls in prawns, calamari and fish alongside the chips, while family packs, dim sims and gravy keep the whole operation firmly in classic suburban-chippy territory.

5/155 West Tamar Road, Trevallyn

Fraggles Fish and Chips

Fraggles has true northern-Tasmania cred behind the fryer. The Invermay shop won Tasmania’s People’s Choice title at the Great Australian Fish & Chip Awards in 2018, 2021 and 2022, and still builds the menu around local fish and Tasmanian potatoes. Fresh local gummy flake is the bestseller, joined by flathead, blue grenadier, whiting, scallops and prawns; the large seafood basket throws most of them together with chips. Old-school chippy, trophy cabinet included.

297 Invermay Road, Invermay

Rupert & Hound

At Rupert & Hound, fish and chips gets the Seaport treatment: local catch, a crisp batter, house tartare and a proper plate rather than a paper parcel, with the North Esk sliding past the windows. The wider menu shifts with Tasmania’s seasons, moving through oysters, scallops and whatever the boats have yielded well that week. It feels grown-up without sanding off the seafood-shop pleasure of the thing.

30 Seaport Boulevard, Launceston

The Best Fish and Chips on Tasmania’s East Coast

The Great Eastern Drive keeps finding the sea. Across 176 kilometres between Orford and St Helens, the road passes the Maria Island ferry at Triabunna, oyster leases around Freycinet, Bicheno’s fishing fleet and the working waterfront of St Helens, Tasmania’s saltwater game-fishing capital.

Lunch follows accordingly. Fish is battered beside marinas, scallops disappear from paper cartons in car parks, rock lobster lands a few metres from the boats and, at Freycinet, even fish and chips can arrive with a glass of East Coast wine. Windows down, towel still damp in the boot, vinegar soaking into the paper: this is the Tasmania road trip that keeps interrupting itself for seafood.

Mariners of Bicheno

Mariners of Bicheno is the new old-school chippy from Sara and Marcus Walkem, the couple behind Lobster Shack Tasmania. They’ve taken over the former Tasmanian Coastal Seafoods shop and kept the brief wonderfully direct: battered scallops, crumbed calamari, burgers, steak sandwiches, potato cakes and fish and chips, with Marcus supplying Southern Rock Lobster and scale fish from his own boat. The name comes from that fishing vessel too, which makes the ocean-to-counter connection feel very literal.

57 Burgess Street, Bicheno

Freycinet Marine Farm

Freycinet Marine Farm is the East Coast stop for seafood with almost no distance between source and plate. Oysters and blue mussels are harvested from the farm daily, while scallops, rock lobster and scalefish come from Tasmanian waters. Fish and chips stay simple at $26 with local fried fish, crunchy chips, tartare and lemon; then there are oysters with native finger lime and Bloody Mary dressing, scallops with focaccia and garlic butter, and mussels in white wine and cream. This is exactly why road-trip lunch plans get derailed.

1784 Coles Bay Road, Coles Bay

Fishers of Freycinet at Devil’s Corner

Fishers of Freycinet is the East Coast fish-and-chip stop with vines on one side and the Hazards rising beyond Moulting Lagoon on the other. The seasonal seafood line-up runs through beer-battered local fish and chips, oysters and steaming chilli mussels, all made for a glass of Devil’s Corner sparkling or a cool-climate white. The courtyard keeps things casual, but the view has other ideas.

1 Sherbourne Road, Apslawn

The Fish Van

The Fish Van is practically part of the Maria Island ferry routine by now. Triabunna is one of the East Coast’s old fishing towns, and this blue van by the marina keeps the lunch brief exactly as it should: local fish battered, crumbed or grilled, scallops, calamari, chips and the Tackle Box for people who want a bit of everything. Eat it beside the boats before or after the ferry, with Spring Bay doing the scenery.

19 Esplanade West, Triabunna

Skippers Fish Shop

Skippers Fish Shop is still one of St Helens’ best pieces of theatre: a floating fish shop moored at the marina, with a fresh-fish deli on board and the fryer working a few steps away. Local gummy shark, blue-eye trevalla, scallops, oysters and prawns move through the galley, while the Captain’s Box and seafood chowder make choosing less of a moral dilemma. Eat on deck with the boats around you and remember this is still a working fishing town, not a set.

5 Marina Parade, St Helens

Bicheno Lobster Shack

Bicheno Lobster Shack has one of the East Coast’s great lunch settings: the Gulch below, fishing boats shifting in the harbour and Southern Rock Lobster front and centre. Owners Sara and Marcus Walkem come from Tasmania’s seafood industry, and the menu follows suit with lobster rolls, beer-battered fish and chips, chowder, oysters and whole or half lobster cooked daily when fresh catch is available. Add a Tasmanian wine or cider and stay outside if the weather behaves.

40 Waubs Esplanade, Bicheno

The Best Fish and Chips in North West Tasmania

North West Tasmania feels made for fish and chips with the car windows cracked and Bass Strait somewhere in view. The road keeps brushing water: Devonport at the mouth of the Mersey, Ulverstone wrapped around the Leven, then Stanley pressed beneath the great dark shape of The Nut, its fishing boats working from the harbour below.

Out here, seafood still has names and histories attached to it. The Hursey family’s red boats land gummy shark, flathead, stripey trumpeter and Southern Rock Lobster straight into Stanley; further east, fish shops and family kitchens do the same with scallops, trevalla and whatever Bass Strait has been generous with that week. The north-west knows exactly how this meal should feel.

Windows on Westella

Windows on Westella may be the only fish-and-chip stop in Tasmania where the tartare has to compete with a pickled onion factory and a vineyard for attention. The Broadby family opened the cafe beside their Tasmanian Pickled Onions operation in 2017, with Broad Acres Vineyard wrapped around the property and Bass Strait beyond it. Fresh fish and chips arrive with the house pickles, then there are wine tastings, dessert waffles and a pantry full of jars for the drive home.

100 Westella Drive, Ulverstone

Hursey Seafoods

The red boats moored beneath The Nut tell most of the story at Hursey Seafoods. The family fleet line- and hook-catches gummy shark, flathead, stripey trumpeter and other reef fish, while Southern Rock Lobster stays live in sea tanks below the restaurant. Downstairs, gummy flake and chips remains the classic Stanley order; upstairs, scallops, abalone and crayfish get more room to stretch out. In 2025, Hursey’s took home Tasmania’s Gotta Love Tassie Fish & Chips Award.

2 Alexander Terrace, Stanley

George Town Seafoods

George Town Seafoods is a working seafood operation first and a fish-and-chip stop second, which is exactly why it reels us in. The business has been catching and processing Tasmanian seafood since 1993, with its own vessel, Silent Victory, supplying the Franklin Street factory. Lunch runs weekdays from 11am to 2pm, with fish and chips, scallops, seafood wraps and fish burgers built around what has come through the counter, from gummy flake and blue-eye trevalla to flathead and pink ling.

38-44 Franklin Street, George Town

Strait Off The Boat

Strait Off The Boat has a fishing story that actually reaches back beyond the shopfront. Craig Harriss began fishing Tasmanian waters at 16, the family vessel Mary H has worked Bass Strait for decades, and the Devonport business opened in 2011 before passing to the next generation in 2023. The catch changes with the boat, but gummy shark, blue grenadier, pink ling and blue-eye trevalla are regulars, all cooked to order a few streets back from the Mersey. The shop has also been rated Devonport’s best fish and chips five years running, from 2021 to 2025.

17 Forbes Street, Devonport

Strait Off The Boat Seafood, Bar and Restaurant

At Strait Off The Boat Seafood, Bar and Restaurant, the dining room is built on pillars over the water, with rays sometimes gliding underneath at high tide. The family behind it has fished Tasmanian waters for more than 40 years, catching and processing its own seafood before it reaches the kitchen. Fish and chips share the menu with whole fish, crayfish and generous seafood platters served on wooden boats, while the Leven opens out beyond the windows.

1 Wharf Road, Ulverstone

The best fish and chips in Tasmania are scattered from Hobart’s working docks to the Tamar, Freycinet, Bicheno and Stanley, with family-run boats, seafood farms and old-school fryers doing most of the heavy lifting. The fish changes with the coast, from gummy shark and blue-eye trevalla to scallops, flathead and Southern Rock Lobster, but the winning formula stays simple: local catch, hot chips and very little distance between the water and lunch.

For more Tasmania food stops, keep going with our guide to Hobart’s most romantic restaurants and our top picks in Bicheno.