Feel Good Food

My foie gras, might be your fatty organ. Where I see foam, someone else might just think 'snot'. My sublime fish, could be your stinky seafood. Where someone detects nuances of elderberry and high notes of lavender, I might just sneeze into my dinner. Taste is, of course, subjective; which means there’s a lot more to a “good meal” than just the quality of the food.  

When ascertaining what makes up a decent feed in a restaurant, there are many intricate bits and pieces, such as provenance (Was my cow happy? How the hell do you tell? A pre-slaughter questionnaire?), cooking technique, freshness of ingredients, presentation, music, décor, setting and service. But what all this boils down to for me, is how a restaurant makes you feel. Nothing tastes good on a stomach of welling bile - which is precisely what I experienced this week.

But first, the joyous opposite experience, which I had a couple of weeks ago at Italian and Sons, in the unlikely location of Lonsdale St, Braddon, ACT 2600 - sort of in the middle of Canberra where kangaroos are more common than humans at any time after the offices empty between 4 and 4.59pm. Everything feels just a bit weird in Canberra, and the location of Italian and Sons on a big wide boulevard better suited to car yards, is no odder than the other bits about Canberra such as the dominance of Soviet era-inspired residential architecture.

The stark location certainly provided a contrast to the sea of spectacular tulips we slogged through all day at Floriade, which, like Canberra, is a marvel of human planning – except that Floriade is beautiful. Departing the flower show, I sent the girls on ahead to Lonsdale St to ensure we kept our 6.00pm booking, while I ran the ruler over the magnificent ales dispensed from The Wig & Pen just around the corner.

When I’d finished my Rumpole Pale Ale and joined the others at the entrance of Italian and Sons, we had a couple of issues alerting the staff to our arrival (and existence); until we fell into the hands of an older gent, whom I assume is the “Italian” in Italian and Sons. And what he knows how to do, is to make you feel good about being in his restaurant. The non–Soviet style fit out helps:  blackboards, horizontal timber palings on the walls, industrial bar stools, piles of wood for the oven, the oven itself, and the hanging salumi, all contribute to the sensation that tonight, everything’s falling into place.

The food is excellent, with a limited offering concentrating on core Italian capabilities. As we sat down, the wood-fired oven just over our shoulder gave birth to to fluffy focaccia which lapped up the rosemary infused oil accompanying it. Shortly after, the oven disgorged the girls’ classic margherita featuring Victorian buffalo bocconcini (which I thought gave it the edge over my local favourite pizzeria Napoli in Bocca).

I had a quick cleanser of marinated sardines with pine nuts and currants, before my main course of milk-fed veal marsala with wild mushrooms and thyme. This was a tender, mountainous portion lurking precariously on the side of being too sweet, but I enjoyed it immensely. Tania was fortunate enough to have the roast suckling pig on the bone (with apple and sage ‘mostarda’- like a fruit condiment), which usually only trots to the table on Tuesdays. A side dish deliciously merged onion, red peppers and potatoes, and while I found our other side dish of braised flat beans a bit over-cooked, they were a valuable countenance to my marsala sauce. Excellent Italian wines by the glass (each recommended by The Italian) left me even happier to be in this culinary outpost on the streets of Our Nation's Capital. And while I was happy, I kept on spending, something my experienced host clearly understood.

For the final leg, the girls had gelati while I tucked into a Ligurian honey panna cotta and poached red wine pear (above). The espresso was as good as I’d hoped. All up, we consumed a large amount of largely very good (but not faultless) food, but I couldn’t have been made to feel better, and heartily shook hands with The Italian before plunging back into the twentieth century reality of twenty first century Braddon.

Having returned from Canberra, I also had an excellent piece of kangaroo in Sydney on Wednesday night, but the following day phoned the owner of this establishment and made my first ever call of complaint to any restaurant, anywhere - because we were treated like shit by the staff in the dining room of a pub where I’ve spent thousands of dollars over the last few years. I won’t be back, because whilst the food tasted good, the ultimate job of a restaurant is to make you feel good.  And nothing tastes good, when you feel this bad. Perhaps a quick tutorial in Braddon might be in order.