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Canberra's best restaurants: Lanterne Rooms

Natasha Rudra

Gracious: Interior of the Lanterne Rooms restaurant at Campbell.
Gracious: Interior of the Lanterne Rooms restaurant at Campbell.Jeffrey Chan

Top 20 restaurants, Food and Wine Annual 2014: number 10.

There's a serenity about Lanterne Rooms that keeps it in our top 20 for another year. The cooking hasn't wavered - comforting Nyonya style curries and classic Asian dishes given a fine-dining makeover. It's a discreet restaurant in the Campbell shops, the interior turned into a series of dining spaces through the use of dark Chinese screens and billowing white drapes. Soft golden lamps keep everything intimate.

Mantau bread is crisply fried on the outside and fluffy and sweet on the inside, served with a handful of cassava cubes dotted with mustard seeds and curry spices. The Penang-style satay are tiger striped from the grill - a clean charring that doesn't contaminate with smoke the juicy, tender chicken meat. Pork ribs with pickled green chilli and jackfruit are smoky and sticky and salty with falling-off-the-bone meat covered in glossy sauce. The jackfruit and chilli add a really good tangy flavour to the dish.

Succulent: Expect to get your fingers dirty with delicious pork ribs.
Succulent: Expect to get your fingers dirty with delicious pork ribs.Scott Ogilvie
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The wine list is small but features plenty of local wines and varietals. Service is elegantly discreet and calm with plenty of information on wine and food as required. Desserts are limited and tend not to change terribly much - a glass of layered chocolate and coconut panna cotta topped with a swirl of bright green pandan pearls is creamy and light. Peppered pineapple with kulfi ice cream is strong, sweet and tropical but the peppered pineapple works with the cardamom flavour of the ice cream.

Lanterne Rooms has plenty of style and the food has a consistently good feel to it. It doesn't try to hit you over the head with trendy fusion flavours of the moment (jackfruit's time in the sun has yet to come) but the classic dishes, the fine dining touches and the gentle atmosphere make up an excellent experience for a casual lunch or a special dinner.

Lanterne Rooms
3 Blamey Place, Campbell. 6249 6889. lanternerooms.chairmangroup.com.au
Owners Josiah Li and Jeffrey Shim; chef Jeffrey Shim
Lunch Tuesday to Friday; dinner Tuesday to Saturday.

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Default avatarNatasha Rudra is an online editor at The Australian Financial Review based in London. She was the life and entertainment editor at The Canberra Times.

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