The Sydney Morning Herald logo
Advertisement

Tjanabi

Dani Valent and reviewer

Modern Australian

Tjanabi is owned by Carolyn Briggs, a Boon wurrung elder. Her ancestors hunted kangaroo and eel and gathered yams around these parts, where we now eat sushi and watch formula one on the big screen. The direct predecessor of Tjanabi was in Lygon Street, Carlton. I went there five years ago when it was Flamin' Bull, an "indigenous theme restaurant" that went heavy on the you-beaut settler chic with sackcloth chairs and corrugated-iron menus. I remember snap-happy Japanese tourists, earnest Canadians and a decent wallaby fillet rolled with chevre and macadamias. The restaurant later rebranded as Tjanabi ("to celebrate") before closing in July 2006. The new incarnation opened in March in the old Italy I site at the arse-end of Federation Square.

It's a sharp-looking, austere place - lots of glass, no sackcloth - minimally decked out with Aboriginal art. Service was warm and capable. But there was also a suggestion of scrimping and rushing. Our tablecloth had a hole in it. The native cocktails spruiked on the menu hadn't been invented yet. And, even on a mild night, the room was almost chilly. It's going to be a bugger to heat.

The restaurant's point of difference is its use of native Australian produce. There's stuff we're used to, such as kangaroo and eel, and other ingredients that are more of a stretch, including emu and crocodile. The menu is supposed to reflect the six seasons of Melbourne. Late autumn is manemit, which means "good".

Some of the food is good, too. Thin confit emu fillets tasted like lean duck with the texture of minute steak. You can tell those emus run fast. The generous entree serve was smothered in tasty gravy, but the "wild" mushrooms were commercial oyster mushrooms and the hibiscus salad that the menu promised was absent. The disconnection between menu and plate was a problem in other dishes, too. The kangaroo (nice, rare, juicy) was supposed to come with yam mash, but the orange puree was standard sweet potato. Yam and sweet potato are technically interchangeable, but I found the description a bit tricky. We don't call those orange things yams. The wild boar didn't come with the macadamias in the menu description, and it didn't help that parts of the "twice-cooked" boar seemed to be "once-cooked" and "once-dried-out-like-a-boot". The salad with the boar was dreadful: floppy green beans, fennel and nasty tomatoes without any perceptible dressing.

Advertisement

Impressive skewered king prawns came with spicy quandong chutney though I'm not sure why a restaurant that flags its seasonality bothered with the under-ripe mango, and I didn't understand why there was a dinky spoon of tempura oysters on this plate. Much better was the quandong and apple crumble. The tart fruit compote was a delicious example of how native and introduced foods can work brilliantly together.

Indigenous ingredients are the thread that is supposed to hold this menu together, but the food is inconsistent and it's going to take more than the random application of wattleseed and bush tomato to make it all sing. I wanted to enjoy Tjanabi, but the restaurant doesn't make it easy. With more rigour, there might be more to celebrate.

Restaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.

Sign up
Dani ValentDani Valent is a food writer and restaurant reviewer.

From our partners

Advertisement
Advertisement