The Campbell shops feels more like a construction site every time I visit, although happily for the businesses and residents of this desirable suburb, it's not a construction site that sighs derelict but one that looks poised, ready for the frantic activity that surely must come. As it stands, the businesses are ones that have been there for many years – and in the case of eateries, that's the cheap and cheerful Leong Kitchen and the upmarket Lanterne Rooms.

Lanterne Rooms has stuck to the plan in its perhaps eight years in this spot, offering a style of gutsy Malaysian-Chinese based food and reaching much wider for new influences in the way dishes are approached and presented, all wrapped in a very smart set-up and excellent service.

There's a great vibe in the room here, which reminds you of a warm Malaysian upmarket resort, dark wooden floors, big fans on the ceiling and hanging lanterns, white wooden walls, curtains separating smaller dining spaces, mirrors and tea light candles. It feels elegant, relaxed and intimate.

The menu is brief, seven entrees and seven mains, and it's not the kind of place where you'll find a brand new menu every month. Instead, favourite dishes that persist year in year out, such as the "kampung style" slow cooked beef curry and the tom yum prawns with rock melon, with new dishes introduced slowly.

We're looking for some of the new options tonight, so ask for advice on what to eat – and it's a good option here where every staff member can describe each dish down to its detailed ingredients and method of cooking.

We're steered towards the wonton entree, which comes as four delicately flavoured, soft dumplings of prawns and pork with yam bean, in a broth of tamarind, cumin and pepper soup. The soup is hot and warms you from the inside out, with crunch from a green-onion garnish and little sticks of something salty and fried, I guess potato sticks.

Tofu and eggplant "mapo style" is something we've seen and eaten before, but tonight it's arranged differently. It comes almost like a caponata-style salad, little chunks of eggplant, sticks of cucumber and cherry tomato halves, marinated in garlic, with crisp-fried basil leaves. There are four cubes of bouncy tofu, with a delicate salty lemon pepper crust, highly enjoyable to eat. Underneath is a soy-bean paste sauce, which is what makes this dish "mapo style" tofu.

Kapitan duck is also a dish we've had before and we're told it's the "most spicy" on the menu. It's four big meaty chunks of duck on the bone with a pretty hot and thick red paste, crisp-fried curry leaves, with unusual addition of pine nuts, perhaps just to emphasise the fusion aspect. It fires the mouth and brow, with the mashed taro underneath adding a soothing aspect. We're liking the salty skin on the duck.

Shanghai rice noodles, a "lucky dish" eaten in the new year, is on the menu with calamari, prawns and scallops, but we're told it would be more traditional and flavoursome ot have the pork version, so we take the advice. The noodles are flat, oval-shaped pasta, chewy and excellent. They're with a soy-based meaty pork, crunchy cabbage, spring onion and chilli. It's simple and works well, a stir fry the way it should be.

The sparkling water is from Antipodes. The wine list is quite brief, six "cellar selections", 14 reds by the bottle, 16 whites, and six "cellar selections". The focus is mainly on less expensive wines, with prices mostly below $60, and the list is helpfully arranged according to style: "delicate" reds, earthy and spicy reds, and "fuller, meatier" reds, and similar in the whites. There's a good focus on wine by the glass, again at lower-than-usual prices, and overall it's a list that is carefully chosen. It is a list, though, that is not especially adventurous, and less so than it could afford to be with this style of food. The wines are all Australian and French, other than one German riesling, and the styles are largely well known.

Desserts have always been a surprise at Lanterne and tonight is no exception. The new dessert turns out to be not a pleasant surprise, with a dense, warm coconut and banana cake serviced with a sweet and sticky walnut praline, which we really like, a bright green pandan crumb, which is a little exciting, and a smoked date ice cream which is not a success in my view. I'm not a fan of the obsession that has invaded kitchens of pumping smoke flavour into foods in any case, but here it turns the ice cream into something that tastes for all the world like a cigar.

The cassava cake, though, is enjoyable and interesting in a good way. The dense "cake" made with tapioca has a gentle caramelised crust, and is served with a strong amaretto cream, tasting uncompromisingly of that bitter almond amaretto flavour, and in contrast a delicate and gentle, although uncomfortably pink, peach sorbet, On top is an excellent ginger-flavoured meringue.

Lanterne Rooms is a sister of Chairman and Yip, now at the former Malamay site in Barton, and the excellent Lilotang in the same building. They're all of a theme – refined and super hardworking, with very good food, an emphasis on service, and a stylish Asian twang and great individuality. We love coming here and it's a place we return often.