Joe's Bar

It's probably fair to say the bar scene has lagged behind restaurants in getting itself up to inner-city contemporary speed in Canberra. Parlour was an early prodigy in this regard, focusing on its kitchen as much as an ahead-of-the-pack wine list before the 2011 fire, but on the whole it hasn't been easy to find an excellent combination of bar and food. If you share this view, you will no doubt be as impressed as we are at the sheer sophistication of Joe's, the new bar at the East Hotel.

Joe's is small and has a casual humility about it. It's not setting out for glitz and glamour, nor for queues at the bar. It's a cosy spot open to the foyer, and set up with higgledy furniture – a few armchairs, couches, chairs at the long bar, brightly coloured designer plastic chairs, high tables and low. The tables have candles in pink salt-crystal holders, and there are chainmail-look delicate "shades" around the lights. All very attractive.

It's table service for food and drinks, and the menu is appealing. I guess it's not easy to work out where to pitch a bar menu and such things tend to morph as a customer base settles down. Whether Joe's will continue to serve meatballs and lasagne remains to be seen, depending on what people are wanting to eat at a place like this. But we hope they do, especially the meatballs. Such home-cooked comfort food, the meatballs are made of grass-fed Cape Grim beef. They're dense, meaty and quite dry, the choice of top-flight, lean beef making them very worthy and excellent. The tomato sauce is thick, simple and rich.

The theme is Italian and the menu sticks well with the traditional and simple classic dishes. Lasagne al sugo di maiale brasato ($22), a lasagne of chianti-braised pork ribs, has us hooked, but it's the lasagne that dominates the dish. It's clearly homemade and is loaded with the softness of pasta and bechamel, rather less than the pork meat, which is a shame since that's surely where the flavour lies. It's not robustly flavoured but is nevertheless quite a heavy winter-style dish with all that pillowy pasta.

You can simply order cured meats, cheese, olives and antipasto style snacks at Joe's but we're hoping people will eat properly here to encourage the continuation of a full and homely, gutsy menu. We're here to eat, so we began with olives ascolane ($14), stuffed olives. These guys are careful with their provenancing. As well as the Cape Grim beef, they're serving Mount Zero olives – a biodynamic, organic much-lauded grower from Victoria. The big green olives are stuffed with pork and veal meat, fennel seed and rosemary, crumbed, fried and served with aioli. There is such joy in this snack, though we really need more of that aioli. When I wish for a set of Italian grandparents, I wish for them for this purpose – making stuffed fried olives for snacks.

Arancini di riso ($14) are another great snack at Joe's. These come in so many versions that I'm not sure there even is an platonic ideal, nor even a recipe, probably just every family's favourite way of doing it. The Joe's versions are pretty good, not especially intense, but gooey and sticky with the bocconcini and risotto filling just as they should be, salty and crisp fried on the outside but not greasy, and served with a great roast-capsicum aioli, which again I'm wishing we had more of.

The Tuscan free-range chicken liver parfait with pancetta and porcini ($14) is so rugged it's pretty overwhelming. At this level of intensity, they could probably serve smaller portions. It is served with toast which looks to us to be Silo's stirato, our favourite in all of the city, and a good choice.

One of the slightly odd things about our evening is the lack of water. It's not brought to the table and not stashed anywhere obvious. The wine list is not too lengthy, which we like. It's focused on doing a few things with plenty of interest – essentially Italian varieties and locals, mainly wines that are not plentiful on other lists around the city. In the locals, it chooses well – Mount Majura bubbly, Helm and Capital Winery rieslings, Clonakilla's O'Riada shiraz and Nick O'Leary's shiraz, the Collector 2012 sangiovese, Eden Road chardonnay. Our picks of these are the Ravensworth marsanne-roussanne, just so succulent and made for this kind of food, and the Mount Majura tempranillo-shiraz-graciano ($62), a rich but not difficult wine, perfect to have with a meal, although not on offer by the glass, unfortunately.

There's a list of affordable Italians and Italian varieties made in Australia (Pizzini's pinot grigio at $48, Coriole's fiano at $52) and a "Vini speciali" premium list with the most famous Italian varieties – barolo, nebbiolo, barbera and chianti. Plus a list of about 16 grappas from which, if you're anything like us, you will find it near impossible to avert your eyes. The wine, by the way, comes in goblets, which is cool, and in big pours.

For dessert, the mini cannoli al pistacchio ($14) are made with quite thick pastry shells. They're anything but delicate, heavy in the shells, and the whisky-spiced ricotta filling is likewise not the most accessible flavour. They're served on green fairy floss, which unaccountably I like.

The chocolate tart is very dense and dark, which suits me fine. There are three perfect berries and pretty purple leaves on top, which are welcome, but also it has been sprinkled with sea salt, which is not. I know salt and chocolate is the thing but it all detracts from the sheer chocolately point of dessert to my mind.

We come away from Joe's aglow with the excellence of this concept, intimate bar, very stylish but none too fancy, down-to-earth Italian food and a sense of purpose and focus that makes you feel in good hands.