New restaurant: Bourbon Street Kitchen opens in Civic

After a visit to New Orleans last year, which was essentially three days of eating myself into a food coma around the city's French Quarter, I was left lamenting, "there's really nowhere to get food like this in Canberra."

That's no longer the case, with southern American restaurant Bourbon Street Kitchen opening in Civic. The late-night venue has taken over the space formerly housing London Beers and Burgers in the Sydney building.

Owner Alicia Ingram is originally from Georgia. Her father's job in the US Airforce saw her family move to Australia when she was in high school. She moved back to the US for further study, before returning to Australia to live in 2001. Her husband's job in the airforce brought the couple to Canberra early last year.

"I was originally opening [a restaurant] in Sydney and then my husband got the position down here and I was like 'let's go'," Ingram said.

"I worked for another company for a while and kept walking past this space, and I was like 'we have to do it, this is prime location'. It's a beautiful building."

For Ingram, opening a restaurant was always going to mean focussing on southern food.

"I'm from Georgia, and all our food's the same - the south is the south is the south. And it's just my favourite style of cooking," she said.

"I've been cooking for almost 15 years now and this is my style. So when I started thinking about what to open, I decided what else to open but my favourite food?"

"We're very authentic, everything's very home-style cooking, the only different is we've taken out a lot of the oil. So it's a lot more fresh, it's a lot more healthy. With normal southern food you'll find a lot of oil on everything."

The affordable menu includes plenty of southern American comfort foods - corn bread, wings, jambalaya, ribs, fried chicken and brisket. A smaller late-night menu is also available until close at 3am on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

The venue is also open for breakfast Monday to Friday from 7am with a simple menu - think eggs, toast, omelettes, muesli and waffles, and offer smaller servings at lunch.

Cocktails are all American influenced, including the sweet but deadly Hurricane, a nod to the street it's named after, and there's also a focus on bourbons.

While London Circuit might feel a world away from Bourbon Street, the venue's fitout does its bit to set the mood, with casual furnishings, a giant mural by street artist Byrd, plus resident musician Robbie Mann plays jazz three nights a week.

Bourbon Street Kitchen, 121 London Circuit, Canberra.