Icon review: Melburnians are obsessed with new restaurants, but 25-year-old La Luna shows we should value consistency, too

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As much as I adore my home town, and particularly its dining scene, she is a city with a wildly short attention span. Of course, other cities are enamoured of newness – that is not something unique to Melbourne. But I have noticed a certain churlishness around once-fashionable restaurants, a dismissiveness that leads to those restaurants struggling to survive.

Other cities I’ve lived in have tended to respect and celebrate consistency in a way that Melbourne fails to do.

Which is why La Luna, which this year celebrates its 25th anniversary on Rathdowne Street in Carlton North, is an interesting specimen.

This is neither an old-school favourite, beloved for its history (a la Pellegrini’s), nor a trendy newcomer. And while plenty of great restaurants survive for 10 years or more (can you believe that Brae and Tipo 00 are both a decade old this year?), 25-year-old restaurants are something of an anomaly.

This is particularly true of a place like La Luna, which was so very of-its-time when it opened, and has not strayed far from that formula in the years since.

Remember when all the hot chefs liked to pose with dead pig’s heads? That was a major factor in the marketing identity of chef Adrian Richardson, and in the resultant offering at La Luna, which is extremely meat-centric (Richardson’s cookbook, released in 2008, is also titled MEAT).

The staff speak of Richardson in reverent tones as ‘our celebrity chef’.

The interior design of the Victorian corner terrace also leans into this aesthetic, with black walls and light fixtures made from twisted wire fencing.

It’s all a bit Saw for my tastes; I was not sad when the macho and gleeful aspects of carnivorism faded into something slightly more respectful.

But in 1998, all the charcuterie and hand-made pasta and lovingly tended-to house-aged steak must have felt revelatory. In hindsight, La Luna was emphatically ahead of its time.

Even its location, in Rathdowne Village, foreshadowed what was to come for that neighbourhood, and in some ways, it’s still the heart of the place for a certain cohort of long-time residents.

Walk by on any sunny weekend and find the footpath outside the restaurant spilling with regulars, many of whom have been coming here for decades.

They come for the smallgoods, best sampled via a tasting plate ($46) that offers a selection of lightly funky tete fromage, bold salami studded with fennel, and feathery prosciutto aged on the premises for two years, along with pickles and olives and crisp crouton crackers.

Charcuterie of this quality requires a huge amount of training, labour and skill.

I find the best way to dine here is to graze, on house-smoked salmon ($24), steak tartare ($24), and freshly shucked oysters ($6 each).

A special of sauteed scallops ($25) seemed a little expensive for its simplicity and serving size (basically 1.5 scallops sliced to look like three), and the spanner crab tagliatelle ($52) is one of the pricier pasta dishes in town. But it’s a thing of true beauty, the house-made noodles ethereal in their lightness, the bowl crammed with meaty seafood.

Aside from grazing, the other reason to come here is for the selection of steaks, which are grass-fed and dry-aged, and treated with the same level of care as the charcuterie.

A gorgeous porterhouse ($56) was charred and salted perfectly, its pink interior wonderfully tangy. Accompanied by a side of Jerusalem artichokes with blue cheese, hazelnuts and witlof ($18), it made for a fantastic dinner for two.

Desserts tend towards the classic, like tiramisu ($16), occasionally with a modern-ish twist, like the salted hazelnut praline ice-cream accompanying a chocolate torte ($20).

Or you can skip the sweet stuff and continue grazing with a selection of three cheeses ($32), which includes French and Australian varieties way beyond the standards.

The staff here is extremely adept, and particularly helpful when it comes to navigating the wine list, which has some lovely and unexpected bottles. They speak of Richardson in reverent tones as “our celebrity chef”.

If I’d stumbled into La Luna with no clue of its history, I’d never guess that the place predated the turn of the millennium. It isn’t modern or chic by today’s standards, but aside from certain aspects of its slaughterhouse-chic decor, it isn’t dated either.

It is what it is: consistent, a quality that is timeless above all else.