Mezzalira Ristorante

So much more than French cuisine, Italian lends itself to modern fine-dining, with its emphasis on simplicity and pristine produce. Far from killing food with complexity and geometry, the Italian experience can lift it with a sense of lightness and beauty.

This is what you would hope to find at Mezzalira, Canberra's Italian fine diner. And on our most recent visit there we do. All the place needs now is that long-promised refurbishment and the Melbourne Building stalwart looks set to return to the top end of fine dining in the city.

The Trimboli family, which also owns the excellent and more casual Italian and Sons, has been talking about the refurb for some years so it would be a brave call to say it will happen for sure this year, but that, we're told, is the plan. For now, surroundings feel a little uninspiring, other than that heavy door, such a staple of a speccy restaurant. Want to make your customers feel special? Give them a solid unmarked door to lay their shoulder against and push through.

The first thing we like is the wine list, which has a sensibly weighted five or six white wines and the same in reds available by the glass, as well as bubblies and an intriguing range of Italian beers. The wine options choose very well from Australia and Italy, so much so that our wine reviewer Chris Shanahan describes this as the best Canberra wine list he's seen since David Farmer put a list together for the Lobby 30 years ago. We head for Italy and are rewarded for it in the reds with a 2012 Occhipinti SP 68 Nero d'Avola Frappato, a biodynamic wine from Sicily. This blend of nero d'avola and frappato is opulent in the way of a raisined dessert wine, rich but also bright, with a deep colour and beautiful smell.

We have this with a goat ragu - ''Gundaroo baby goat'' with pappardelle ($18/$28). The meat has all the rugged texture that makes goat so good to eat. It's in a simple sauce, bright and sharp with tomatoes, not a deep and dark ragu. The pasta is bitey and pleasant.

Likewise, the pork - in a dish of wood-fired suckling pig and Berkshire pork ribs with bitter greens ($34) - is good meat. Like the goat, this pork has texture you can get your teeth into, while being tender and, since it's pork, layered and fatty as well. The pork is served in a square hunk and with our automatic recoil at geometric food, I'd prefer it less circumscribed. It's topped with a pleasingly porky crust, crunchy and sweet. And underneath is a fennel puree.

It's served also with two little ribs, salty, herby and slightly blackened from the fire, good to gnaw on. Also on the plate is a pile of crisped dark green silverbeet, pretty with flowers. The dish is otherwise unaccompanied - you order vegies and extras separately. So while it's good meat, that's essentially all it is, but you'd want to be pretty dedicated to pork to order this.

It's one of just four mains on the menu, which is nicely succinct, with the pasta dishes also available as main size.

We start the meal with a plate of olives (unremarkable although enhanced with strips of lemon peel) and incomparable bread from the wood-fired oven. Crisp on the outside, squishy in, oily and with all the joy of fast wood-fired cooking, this bread is fantastic. I'm with you if you don't habitually start dinner with bread but make an exception here.

Our standout dishes are two entrees from the specials board. Vitello tonnato ($19): what an excellent, elegant dish. The veal (Northern Rivers - there's plenty of sourcing info on the menu) is stunning, still pink and so soft, crisp on the thin dark edges. The two sauces are distinct, quite strident friends for this meat - the eggy tuna mayonnaise and a super-intense and fresh parsley pesto. There's some little fried capers and under the middle slice of veal a whack of anchovy. This is one of those dishes that gets you hooked so you start looking for it around every corner and in every cookbook.

The figs have a similar lovely purity. Ripe halves of fig, caramelised and served with a sauce flavoured with gorgonzola dolce latte, a not-overwhelming blue cheese. Also with generous piles of creamy, super-soft culatello, a very delicate cured meat.

These entrees have shone with tradition and simplicity and set us in a very positive frame of mind about Mezzalira tonight.

Service is attentive, the staff clearly briefed on what they're serving and helpful with queries. There are other good options in the menu - an early-bird option, a ''feed me'' option ($64), and a five-course tasting menu with matched wines ($110). Plus live jazz with drinks and snacks from 4.30pm on Fridays, and within a week or two the pavement wine bar. Which all adds to the feeling of energy.

In desserts (all $15), the cassata is right for a hot evening. Commercial cassata is a horror not as appalling as cookies and cream or chocolate-brownie ice-cream, but making the same dreadful error of ruining a luscious dessert by adding horrible bits. No such errors here, and not a glace cherry in sight. The slices of ricotta semifreddo are simple and not too sweet, topped with little crumbly sugary bits on top. Alongside is equally simple pistachio ice-cream, sugared pistachios and a syrupy beautiful cherry compote.

A passionfruit tart is intense with passionfruit, on top of a biscuit base, which is rather too thick to match the delicacy of the filling. Lime zest adds a refreshing touch to the plate, as does as yoghurt ice-cream, and the honeyed figs alongside are, as figs inevitably are, simply lovely.

It's been three years, I think, since I last ate at Mezzalira, and it wasn't a visit that inspired a quick return. This time, though, I'm convinced it's right on track, with confident and elegant handling of not-too-fancy classic Italian dishes.