Lentil as Anything

Shanaka Fernando is often hailed as a modern-day revolutionary best known for his ‘pay-what-you-can-afford’ community restaurants in Melbourne. He was named Australia’s Local Hero in the Australian of the Year Awards and was a guest judge on MasterChef alongside the Dalai Lama. This book strips back the labels that have been slapped onto Shanaka’s media-built poster boy persona and gives us an insight into some of the experiences that have shaped the man he has become.

This entrancingly honest and refreshingly candid memoir hints at the roots of Shanaka’s early social awakening with tales of a 1970s childhood in Sri Lanka’s capital, Columbo. From his upbringing within an eccentric extended family living in a residential compound populated with a throng of memorable characters, we accompany the grown up Shanaka on his travels from Australia to Asia to South America and back as he explores new ways of living his life.

“Fernando is one of those rare pioneers who are prepared to live by their convictions, flaunt social convention and challenge the status quo. The story of his lifelong quest for meaning – and the ‘experiment in generosity’ that became Lentil As Anything – is inspiring and challenging in equal measure. Few autobiographies are likely to evoke the senses and soul quite as much as Fernando’s tale of global travel, self-exploration and cultural innovation”- Dr Wayne Visser, Director of Kaleidoscope Futures and author of “The Quest for Sustainable Business” and “The Age of Responsibility”

About the Author

Shanaka Fernando is a revolutionary. For many years he has been well known in Melbourne, Australia, as the pioneer of the Lentil as Anything pay-as-you-feel vegetarian restaurants, and in recent times he is becoming influential as a public speaker and motivator.

He leads a simple, modest life as he continues to inspire and challenge perhaps millions as he advocates an inclusive, ethical approach to business and life, and a belief in the innate goodness and generosity of his fellow man.

The socially responsible Lentil as Anything restaurants feed thousands every week, and set an example for other restaurants and businesses to follow – an example which illustrates what an inclusive, ethical approach to business, and life, can achieve. In the Lentil as Anything restaurants it is people that qualify life, not property. ‘You get fed and treated with dignity even if you don’t have any money, and the colour of your skin and your education and your beliefs only put you on a par with everyone else.’

Shanaka is a modern day folk hero, offering an alternative, a new way of living that is not based on consumerism, profit or greed.