D'Browe's

It feels like about 100 years ago since a night out meant candle light, white linen, plates of snails in butter, and Bombe Alaska for dessert. Now restaurants are all about the contemporary and Australian dining  might look more to Asia and the United States for inspiration - all that bo ssam, sashimi and pulled pork. But here at D'Browes you're untroubled by such trends. The menu is unabashedly classic European comfort food: duck livers, profiteroles filled with ice cream, osso bucco. There are tealights and white tablecloths and men in business suits telling tall tales after a hard day's work at Parliament.

The restaurant  feels like part of the fabric of Narrabundah - casual and neighbourly. The glass fronted dining room, the black and white patterned wall and the little archway with specials scrawled in chalk all hint at a little French bistro. At night it's particularly soft with tealights on every table. Damien Browes appears to run the operation almost singlehanded - answering the phone, chatting with diners, scribbling out their orders and cooking. It's friendly and unpretentious.

It's also BYO and has been for years - so bring a bottle or six with you. Well prepared groups bring their wine supplies with them and settle in for the night, while forgetful boyfriends on dates are dispatched to the Narrabundah IGA round the corner to pick up a romance-enhancing French tipple or a soothing sauv blanc. I've forgotten to arm us with wine, and I think the IGA is closed, but it's a school night so perhaps that's all for the best. We'll just have to eat more food to make up.

Duck livers are a particularly comforting food - all that deep earthy flavour in a little package - and these are a generous serve ($14.50) with some properly al dente pasta spirals and plenty of savoury, livery sauce. A starter of arancini ($14.50) is a blackboard special tonight. They're served in a little bowl which makes them a little hard to cut into but the tomato sauce piled on top of each arancini is good. They're nicely fried but to me the outer shell lacks that crisp crunch and there are a couple of cold spots inside.

Did I say the portions are generous? The pork cutlet ($27.50)  is the size and thickness of a small sponge cake. It sits on a bed of chunky mashed potato and softly cooked aubergine chunks. There's a good crisp edge on the meat and its rind of delightful fat and it's nicely tender inside. And it's covered in a swaddling blanket of mustard cream and herbs and a layer of tiny parmesan curls that bring everything home in a very filling, albeit rather home cooking kind of way. It's a dish that anchors you for the night and doesn't apologise for the fact.

The osso bucco ($27.50) is similarly big. The meat is tender enough with a zesty citrus tang but to my mind an osso bucco should be slow-cooked to the point where the meat yields meltingly to the fork and I don't feel that's happened on this plate - to my mind it lacks that richness that comes from the breakdown of gelatin and tendon and the resulting deeper texture and flavour. And if it matters to you, it's served on the same rustic mashed potato as the pork cutlet rather than a more traditional creamy polenta.

Desserts are an incredibly reasonable price for this day and age - $11 - and I'd really like to become reacquainted with the profiteroles, which I recall from a previous visit as an epic mountain of pastry, ice cream and chocolate shell. But that pork cutlet takes no prisoners. We have to suffice with poached pear and zabaglione, which tends towards soupy with plenty of marsala, topped with a rather thin custard and a scoop of vanilla ice cream for that hot-and-cold contrast. It's sprinkled with flakes of almond and served in an old-fashioned cut glass vessel. 

It's been a very big meal - not without flaws - but in a time of shared plates, milk crates and contemporary Asian tapas, D'Browes continues to turn out hearty, uncomplicated European dishes without fear or favour.