“So, what do you think of Australian food then Alf?” I asked my brother at the end of our meal at Lantana in Southwark.
“Well, it doesn’t seem to exist”.
This seemed like a reasonable assessment of the food we’d had at the Australian brunch style restaurant.
Don’t get me wrong, this was pretty tasty fare. Alf had a perfectly respectable beef burger, I munched down a chicken Katsu dish and we had cauliflower croquettes to kick things off.
But as the dishes we selected showed, the food mainly seemed to be from the rest of the world. We could have also picked at a shawarma grain bowl (Lebanon?), fish tacos (Mexico), a sweet & sour pork belly (China) among other international delicacies.
This isn’t any kind of criticism of the restaurant, or indeed Australian culture in general. Lantana seem to rightly pride themselves on their, and indeed Australia’s, celebration of multiculturalism, a notion that has become tragically unfashionable in recent years in Britain.
All the same, this is a blog about trying the cuisine of specific countries, and Lantana didn’t give us much of a taste of Australian food at all. No shrimps on the barbie here, nor ‘parmies’ (I’ve lived with about a million Australian flatmates over the years and a couple of them have made me this dish), kangaroo burgers or anything else. The only truly antipodean thing we consumed was a bottle of shiraz, which was perfectly fine. It must be said they have a weekend brunch menu, and Australians seem to claim this as a significant culinary invention of theirs, although Lantana’s menu still looks pretty international.
There may well be more authentic Australian diners out there in London. We probably should’ve ventured out to Clapham which remains the top spot for Australians living in the capital. Still, we couldn’t find much online.
So, all in all Lantana is a very nice restaurant, but don’t go there to feel like you’re on your gap year again. They don’t even stock XXXX or any other Aussie beers.
Score: 7/10
Cost: £72
Location: 44-46 Southwark St, London SE1 1UN
The A to Z of World Food in London 