One of the aims that we had for this year's Melbourne Writers Festival was to emulate the tradition that 4MA members have of an opening dinner. We decided to have ours on the first Saturday of the festival and we were keen to find a venue that had something a little different about it. We finally settled on trying Tjanabi - a newish restaurant on the edges of Federation Square - not that far from the Malthouse Theatre. Interestingly enough, next year the Festival will be moving to Federation Square.
We opted to try Tjanabi mostly because of the menu - it is a contempary restaurant with an Indigenous flavour and we were most definitely not disappointed. A range of options were chosen by members of our party including the Crocodile, Emu, Kangaroo, Chicken, Steak and Fish and I don't think anybody was even slightly underwhelmed by their meal. The desserts met with equal acclaim - and just for the record the Pannecotta with ginger and finger lime syrup was to die for, and the Wattleseed icecream was magnificent.
The service was excellent, the staff were extremely obliging and all in all, we're definitely going back to Tjanabi.