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Chef Ben Willis takes his hat off for Canberra Good Food Month

Natasha Rudra

Ben Willis runs fine dining restaurants Aubergine and Temporada.
Ben Willis runs fine dining restaurants Aubergine and Temporada.Rohan Thomson

He has got chef's hats and his restaurants have put Canberra on the map but Ben Willis is preparing for a couple of unconventional dinners in October.

Willis, who runs fine dining restaurants Aubergine and Temporada, wants Canberra's foodies to kick back and enjoy some unusual meals as part of Good Food Month.

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Good Food Month is coming to Canberra as a stand-alone event for the first time in October and features a program of chef's dinners, special set lunches and a celebrity guest or two.

Among the star attractions is MoVida chef Frank Camorra, who will be heading to Canberra to put on a dinner at Parlour Wine Room in NewActon on October 22.

Willis is doing a "hats off" dinner at Aubergine – which has two hats in the Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide and has recently been named one of Australia's top 50 restaurants.

It is a one-off dinner on October 20 featuring wine writer Mike Bennie, who will be selecting "weird and wonderful" drinks that are rarely seen to go alongside six courses from Aubergine.

Willis cheerfully admits "we have no idea" what the final menu will end up looking like but says it will be playful for foodies looking to try unusual dishes and drinks that might not always make it onto restaurant tables.

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"[It's time] to let their hair down and hand themselves over to Mike and I to come up with a menu of things that are in season and for him to introduce things he's picked up from everywhere," he said.

"It could be beers, it could be ciders, it could be sake, it could be any number of weird and wonderful drinks that Mike has discovered."

At Temporada, which Willis runs with chef and business partner Chris Darragh, there will also be a dinner focused on barbecue, a food for which Canberra has shown a voracious appetite.

"We're going to play. There's no point half doing anything. We're trying to make it something a little bit unique for the night so if you miss out, you miss out," he said.

"You can just come and relax and buy a bottle or a glass of wine. There's no particular genre, it's not just going to be ribs and barbecue sauce."

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Good Food Month, which is run by Fairfax, publisher of The Canberra Times, is Australia's largest food festival. It draws tens of thousands of foodies in Sydney and Melbourne and has expanded to Brisbane and Canberra this year.

Throughout October, Canberra restaurants and chefs aim to celebrate the capital's burgeoning food scene with dinners, lunches, talks and masterclasses.

The Good Food Month program is out now in the Canberra Times or online at canberra.goodfoodmonth.com

Default avatarNatasha Rudra is an online editor at The Australian Financial Review based in London. She was the life and entertainment editor at The Canberra Times.

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