Canberra's best restaurants: Pulp Kitchen

Top 20 restaurants, Food and Wine Annual 2014: number 13.

Canberra's only real European brasserie, Pulp Kitchen has carved a place for itself as a confident and exciting establishment with serious skill in the kitchen. Despite changes in ownership some time back, it has maintained a clear European identity.

There's no Asian fusion attitude, or Mod Oz madness here; this place is about producing the classics of the European table, and doing it at the highest level. Be it the beef tenderloin with perfect pomme frites and bearnaise, the heady fish stew, bouillabaisse or lamb liver, nested against perfect pomme puree and sweet caramelised onion – all the hits are there, cooked to perfection, every time, day in, day out.

About 10 dishes on the printed menu are available in entree or main size, along with the extensive blackboard offerings each day. This gives a terrific flexibility, for appetite (the standard three-course dinner is simply too much for many of us) but also helps when you simply can't choose.

A good wine list, the well informed and often fantastically French service and the kind of bustle you'd expect in a quality brasserie: the whole package is here. If that's not enough for you, Pulp also has arguably Canberra's best weekend brunch - don't miss the raclette (cheese, egg and ham off the hock, on toast) or the granita oysters.

Also you will find possibly the best set lunch deal, $35/$45 for two or three courses.

Pulp Kitchen
Wakefield Gardens, Ainslie. 6257 4334. pulp-kitchen.com.au
Owners Nathan Brown and Daniel Giordani; chef Jack Walker.
Lunch noon-2pm Wednesday to Friday; dinner 6pm-late Tuesday to Saturday; brunch 9am-2.30pm Saturday and Sunday.