Great coffee. Interesting variety of food. The chicken Sharma is really good. Glutenfree dishes were awesome too.

This little cafe is situated in the ground floor of the Library building in Murray St. It's quite small and not necessarily great for prams. It has an inside or outside area.

Great place to meet friends if you work in the city, or after a trip to the library with children.

My son and I came here for lunch during a trip to the library. We were there right at lunch time and had no trouble finding a table. The menu seemed to be biased towards many different types of 'toasties' - pide, foccacia, toast - but luckily that was what we were after. The service was friendly and very quick and the prices were comparable for similar food in other places. I would go there again on a library trip, as it's so convenient.

Approximate cost: $8 lunch

I love their salad options and I'm happy to pay the price for something so nice - however - it can get a little crowded and noisy so if you're after a quite lunch - go elsewhere.

This is a cafe right inside the door of the hobart library. I had a toasted focasia here and its was fairly ordinary, they have a nice selection of hot and cold drinks, but i found that they didnt have a big enough hot food selection to my liking i would have liked a bigger selection to choose from as menu is very small, its often very busy and cramped in there too its often hard to find a table, but its definatly at a convenient location.

Really nice food but it's not cheap.
The cakes and pastries are expensive compared to to other places, and you don't get anything extra that is routinely offered elsewhere - no cream or icecream, nothing heated (ie, banana bread) unless you specifically ask it to be, not even a serviette unless you ask for one!
Main meals are tasty but again on the pricey side.
I don't eat here as often as I otherwise would because of the cost.

Addit 20th December 2010: I had lunch here again today, the carrot and coriander soup, which is usually very nice but lacked a bit of zing today. I really did notice the lack of the little extras taken for granted at other places - no condiments on the table, had to ask for pepper and salt, had to ask for a serviette.
Also, service was friendly but quite slow - I was tempted to leave just before my soup arrived. The place wasn't even half full, and it took 15 minutes to arrive - how long does it take to ladle out a bowl of soup? Or at the worst, bung it in the microwave.
There were three people in the kitchen and they seemed more intent on making up more rolls for the display cabinet than serving the customer who was waiting for their soup!
One last thing - on the specials boards, they don't display their prices, which always annoys me - either they think the prices would scare people off because they're too high, or they think they're too elitist to show prices. I'm not that mean (I know they're on the pricey side but I still eat there sometimes) but I like to know before I order how much I'm paying, and I resent having to ask and being made to feel like a penny pincher.

Addit 19th June 2012: I just had to add to my review again - I had lunch here today, mainly because I was so hungry I couldn't think straight, and didn't want to walk further into the city, or eat a burger at K & D!
I had one of the specials, French Tart, which was absolutely delicious, but it came served as a small slice (inch & half max, at the crust end) alone on a large plate. Nothing else. For around $8, I wasn't expecting salad, but a couple of leaves as a garnish would've been nice, and I WAS expecting some variety of relish to accompany it.
The hazelnut latte turned out to have no syrup in it, hazelnut or any other, although to be fair, I didn't bother to send it back, just put sugar in and drank it. When you're only making one coffee, how hard is it to get it right?

One other thing that has niggled at me several times I've eaten there - I've sometimes been made to feel unwelcome if all I've ordered is tea or coffee. A few times I've had not-so-subtle enquiries as to whether I'd like anything else, or am I finished (yet)? This when I actually haven't finished my drink yet! Apparently, lingering over a cuppa while browsing the newspaper is seen as unacceptable! This would be understandable if the place was full and they needed the table, but on every single occasion, there have been plenty of empty tables. This has always come from the owner himself, not from any of the wait staff.
Considering their higher than average prices, I don't take kindly to the implication that I haven't spent enough money to be given the privilege of occupying a table. And if I were them, I wouldn't be alienating customers in such a small place as Hobart.

Zest café is located off the foyer inside the State Library, in Murray St.
They serve great hot drinks and have a good selection of food, whether it's for a snack, a light meal etc.
It's a great place to meet for lunch as they have an indoor area and an outdoor area.