Melbourne’s Tjanabi Indigenous Restaurant

Okay, vegetarian readers.  This post might not be up your street.  On our second night in Melbourne, we took the short walk from our hotel to Federation Square where dinner was to be enjoyed in Tjanabi, The All Australia Restaurant.  It turned into quite the meat fest!

The word Tjanabi means ‘to celebrate’ in the language of the original inhabitants of Melbourne and the idea of this restaurant is literally to celebrate the local and indigenous foods.  They have done this by creating a menu made up entirely of local produce and indigenous ingredients, and the restaurant is a great way to have a culinary crash course in Australian indigenous food.

We had tried our first kangaroo on our Foodies’ Dream Tour at Queen Victoria Market earlier in the day, and our aim at Tjanabi was to try as many different Australian meats as possible.

Tjanabi enabled us to do this by offering the option of Taster Plates, with which we started. The idea was kind of like an All Australian Tapas.  There are 11 possible options on the menu and you can choose 4, 6, or 8 selections.  We went for 6 and ticked a few of the meats we wanted to try off our list in one quick starter!