Simple Italian cuisine done right at Locale

Twice we have made the journey across the lake to Deakin to visit Locale, and each time we make ourselves feel like locals by winding around the Yarralumla lake front and up Novar Street, adding nostalgia by shaking our heads at what has become of all those Yarralumla knockdowns we rented, booted out year by year as owners progressively rebuilt. Locale feels like the kind of place a local would frequent - busy and happy - but it is plenty good enough to cross the city for. More than. It really gets the food right.

It's so busy this Wednesday evening that there's no table for us and we find ourselves facing a 45-minute wait. But we kind of stay put, just stand there, annoyingly, like we haven't quite understood. This reminds me of how I got my first job in Canberra, staging what amounted to a sit in. And, like the job, these people are nice enough not to shoo us off the premises but to hand us menus and invite us to sit on the sidewalk furniture until they can rustle up a seat. Which they do quick smart, it's brilliant!

The food is Italian. It's generous and simple, but it's also good. This isn't high-end Italian but it's really decent food and enjoyable at every step. Truffled polenta chips ($14), well, they're a heavy, pudding like start, with their gorgonzola "fondue", but if you were having a beer and needing to fill up, they're so much better than a plate of fries.

Likewise, whitebait with lime aioli ($15). These are a fantastic snack, salty and crunchy little deepfried fish - a substantial bowl full.

Wild-mushroom arancini ($18) are not as rich and sticky as I remember, but they're fine. Small and full of flavour and another really decent snack.

Risotto with spanner crab, moreton bay bug, green chilli and spring onion ($34) is not nutty and unified like the best risottos; the rice is rather loose. But it's made with decent seafood stock and is likeable. The first taste whacks you with heat, presumably from the sliced green chillies and perhaps some other source of heat, but it calms down as you eat, and you can't help eating the lot. It's a bold rendition and not unreasonable.

The "gamberi" pizza ($25) is great. The pizza base here is good - it's thin and crisp, the dry kind rather than chewy, but clearly housemade. It's really at the better end of pizzas in Canberra, as those of you who roam the city looking too often for good pizza will likely attest. The leek is great; why don't more pizzas feature this excellent addition? And there's prawns, spinach, marscapone, chilli oil and fior di latte. This feels fresh.

Chocolate pudding is something else you might well order compulsively everywhere you go, even elegiacally for the knowledge of how perfect it can be if only, if only. Here, you won't eat the tortino al cioccolato ($16) with sadness but with joy. Perhaps ignore the salted peanut gelato alongside as it's pretty much beside the point, and just stick with the bowl of warm Perugia chocolate pudding. It will stick with you; it's intense, dark, sticky and captures us.

Bombolini ($14) - chocolate-filled warm doughnuts - are an altogether more showground dessert. But again, they work. They're small enough not to be ridiculous and entirely over the top. They are still, however, doughnuts. And doughnuts filled with chocolate.

There's a kids menu here - little pizzas, proper pasta, chicken. And there's a decent wine list for the grown-ups - well-priced with most wines available by the glass. The focus is sensible on Italian varieties from Australia and wines from Italy. That is good, and it captures the good things about Locale - focused, properly themed and confident about what it is. They're pretty lucky in Deakin to have a local like this.