Canberra's best restaurants: Aubergine shining example

Top 20 restaurants, Food and Wine Annual 2014: number 2.

Aubergine is serious territory for the Canberra foodie and rightly so. Ben Willis' fine dining restaurant at the Griffith shops is full of light and white linen, with that huge, curved front window that looks onto the shops and a tiny balcony at one side.

The wine list is huge and ambitious with plenty of interest and unusual things to drink, including natural wines and even a few sakes, under the deft touch of sommelier Josh Donnelly. Platters of pre-entrees include a chocolate and black pudding canoli, crisp and savoury and rich all at once, and soft pea emulsion on a matching bright green pea crisp, scattered with salty bottarga crumbs.

There's a set menu of four courses – three of them offer a number of options but the first course is fixed. And so it should be. It's bright pink ocean trout that cuts like butter and melts in the mouth, topped with a swathe of puffy, crunchy skin. Cauliflower rice adds a wonderful nibbly texture and there are lightly pickled vegetables to lend sweetness in a cloud of cauliflower cream. It's high quality eating and a perfect start to a meal.

Quail ballotine with sticky black wild rice and oyster mushrooms is a dark, meaty dish with plenty of umami and caramel flavours, like char siu. It's a heavy dish but comforting and good. More subtle is a mulloway dish served with delicate cuttlefish and accompanied by roast onions stuffed with Paris mash.

Desserts also shine, a small selection but cleverly thought out and nicely done – a summery swirl of mulberries, frozen yogurt and lemon cream is topped with sails of beetroot and Arctic white meringue pressed into crisp wafers. It's creamy and sweet and light with vanilla and berry notes while the beetroot wafers add a lovely earthy flavour underneath.

Aubergine's still one of the capital's best dining spots and keeps turning out intriguing dishes with calm, understated elegance.

Aubergine
18 Barker Street, Griffith. 6260 8666. aubergine.com.au
Owner Ben Willis and Andrea Collin; chef Ben Willis.
Dinner from 6pm Monday to Saturday.