Canberra's top 20 restaurants: Sage Dining Rooms, Braddon

Top 20 restaurants, Food and Wine Annual 2014: number 16.

Sage restaurant, along with its garden bar, Mint, is tucked into the rear of the old Gorman House building in leafy inner city Braddon. Like a lot of these original Canberra buildings, dating back to when the lake was still being built, this place oozes colonial charm. And it's a great thing that they are being maintained and used.

Sage has changed a bit over the years, from that tiny little dining room - if you swung your arms around in expansive gesture you'd hit everyone in the room. - to a place that now spills out through huge doors into the private garden and courtyard and then further out to the very popular Mint bar area where you are made to sit on beer kegs.

These days the menu is pretty confident. The only option for dinner is a set three courses for $75. The serving size makes for a pleasantly fulfilling experience and you don't walk out thinking you had to consume too much. There are four choices in each of the three courses, plus some starters and sides. There's very bright, colourful food on an arrangement of contrasting and varied stone and crockery tableware. Lots of thought has been put into balance and style, each plate a near picture-perfect rendition of modern restaurant food. Lots of foamy things and geometric dollops of sauce.

There's a good use of fresh seasonal produce throughout the menu. Dishes such as sugar-cured ocean trout with avocado, wasabi, olive and citrus are delightfully delicate and fragrant. It's so easy to like this style of food, it's like Canadians, everyone loves them. Slow-cooked beef short rib with pumpkin, charred onion cups with an "umami" jus is good but also quite tidy too.

The desserts are the strongest course and worth waiting for. The chef's take on apple crumble is worth a mention. A deconstructed and "black-holed" version where the apples are compressed to this intense, dense core of flavour and there's rhubarb, orange and a buckwheat crumble all undercut with a licorice smear. The wine and liquor list is well put together and plentifully filled, the staff are spot-on with their training and detail. They look a little unusual in braces and bow ties but the aesthetic fits this timelessly positioned foodie destination.

Sage Dining Rooms
Gorman House, Ainslie Avenue, Braddon. 6249 6050
Owners Peter and Michael Harrington; chef Damian Brabender.
Lunch 12pm-2pm, dinner 5.30pm-10pm Tuesday to Saturday.