Lanterne Rooms

Lanterne Rooms is the Chairman Group’s Nyonya restaurant, long a Canberra fixture and now settled into a larger home on the ground floor of the Iskia East building on Constitution Avenue in Campbell. The cooking is bold Malaysian-Chinese with, as the restaurant puts it, an “A-ma” — grandmother — soul, plated with a good deal more polish than that suggests.

The new site is what makes it work as an event venue rather than just a restaurant. There is a private dining room, semi-private areas that can be closed off from the main room, an outdoor dining space, and the Lanterne Bar, which is the intimate end of the offering and suits a group of around thirty. Group bookings run from twelve guests upward on set menus, and events can be built out with canapés and drinks packages through the venue’s events manager.

The occasions they cater for are the celebratory ones — engagements, anniversaries, milestone birthdays, retirements, wedding celebrations and corporate dinners. It is a warm, low-lit room of timber and arches rather than a function hall, which makes it a good match for a smaller, seated event where the food is the centrepiece. Parking is on site, in the Iskia building’s ground floor and basement, with a public car park nearby off Borella Street.