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All Australia Sydney The Lillipad Cafe
The Lillipad Cafe is permanently closed.

This entry remains in the Atlas as a record of its history, but it is no longer accessible to visitors.

AO Edited Gastro Obscura

The Lillipad Cafe

An indigenous ethnobotanist runs this brunch spot celebrating Australia’s native flavors.

Sydney, Australia

Added By
Reina Gattuso
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  Collector of Experiences / Atlas Obscura User
  Collector of Experiences / Atlas Obscura User
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About

The Lillipad Cafe’s signature gangurru burger is, like many burgers, topped with lettuce and served in a toasted bun. Take one bite, however, and you’ll realize there is something special about it. The patty sports hazelnut-bitter notes, thanks to the addition of indigenous Australian wattleseed. It’s topped with a juicy bush tomato relish and finger lime mayonnaise. The patty itself is made of kangaroo meat—called “gangurru” in the Guugu Yimithirr language. 

This brunch and lunch spot is owned by Nyoka Hrabinsky, an ethnobotanist from the indigenous Yidinji nation, and her husband Laszio. Hrabinsky learned to cook “bush tucker,” or native Australian food, by observing her elders as a child in an indigenous community in rural Queensland. As an adult, she worked as a park ranger, but felt that the role didn’t allow her to collaborate with the traditional owners of the land she worked on, many of whom had been forcibly displaced by European colonization.

So she pivoted to ethnobotany, working with native peoples in Queensland to document and preserve their plant knowledge and heritage. And at the Lillipad Cafe, with its funky murals and inventive use of indigenous ingredients like cinnamon myrtle, wattleseed, Davidson plum, and macadamia nut, she brings bush tucker to urban Sydney in the form of burgers and breakfast treats.

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Restaurants Indigenous

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Added By

Reina Gattuso

Edited By

Anne Ewbank, Collector of Experiences

  • Anne Ewbank
  • Collector of Experiences

Published

February 17, 2021

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The Lillipad Cafe
34 Glebe Point Road
Sydney, 2037
Australia
-33.8837, 151.191645
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