Canberra’s best food answer is short: book Akiba on Bunda Street, where the chefs cook over live wood and charcoal, and finish the night upstairs at Bar Rochford in the Melbourne Building. Everything else in this guide is the supporting cast, and the supporting cast is strong.
The capital eats better than its reputation suggests, and it eats in caucuses: the noodle lunchers, the Bunda Street loyalists, the Italian bloc and the wine bar faction. Most of them operate within a few blocks of each other in Civic, which makes this an unusually walkable eating city. Here is each faction’s platform.
The noodle lunch caucus
Civic’s midday economy runs on broth. iPho at 1 Rudd Street handles the Vietnamese portfolio, pho and rice vermicelli salads and spring rolls, cooked with the confidence of a specialist and a reputation for tasting like Vietnam rather than a compromise with it. Ming’s Pantry answers for Malaysia with laksa, wantan mee dry or soupy, prawn mee, nasi lemak and popiah, in a snug, casual room hung with Malaysian-inspired artwork. Ask what the regulars order; the answer changes by table and everyone defends theirs.
The senior member is Asian Noodle House in Civic, whose unpretentious dining room works through a tight list of 27 dishes: laksas, Pad Thai, Hokkien noodles, nasi goreng, plus curry puffs and satay skewers to start. The kitchen also ranges across stir-fries and bigger rice mains for the noodle-averse. Weekday lunch runs 11am to 2.30pm and dinner 5pm to 10pm, with dine-in, takeaway and delivery for sitting days that run long. A menu that fits on one page and has not needed to grow is its own kind of recommendation.
Bunda Street: the eating spine
One city block does a lot of Canberra’s heavy lifting. Akiba at 4 Bunda Street is the headline act, an eclectic menu of Asian barbecue, raw bar plates and modern dim sum from a kitchen working over live wood and charcoal, in a room of steel and recycled timber. The staff know the menu well enough to order for you, the cocktails are crafted in-house, and the house Akipops run a friendly $7, which buys a lot of goodwill in this town.
Down the street at 148 Bunda, two very different neighbours share an address. 85C Bakery Cafe bakes more than 50 varieties of pastry fresh through the day in its in-shop bakery, brews each coffee to order with Guatemalan beans, and pours a Sea Salt Series of drinks for the curious, alongside milk teas, fresh teas and full cakes by the slice or the whole, all determinedly affordable. It is the correct first stop of the day and a dangerous last one. INKA, meanwhile, blends Japanese and Peruvian cooking in one stylish room, which is not a sentence many Australian cities can offer.
The Italian bloc
Bicicletta, the family-owned restaurant inside the Peppers Gallery Hotel, is the sit-down pick: homemade pizza, pasta and gelato built on local and seasonal produce, with daily specials fresh from the market, a curated wine list, and a garden courtyard for the warm months. The coffee is genuinely good, which matters in a hotel restaurant, the courtyard makes a convivial spot for a slow lunch, and there is a private dining area for occasions plus takeaway for nights that are not one.
Amici Wine Bar & Deli on Northbourne Avenue is the graze-instead option, pizza, cured meats and Mediterranean salads matched to boutique wine pairings, with regulars insisting the cannoli are not optional. The wines, cheeses and cured meats are matched with real care, which is why it doubles as the neighbourhood’s default date venue. Between the two of them, the Italian vote is well represented.
The wine bar faction
Bar Rochford, up on the first floor of the Melbourne Building, is where the city’s food and wine obsessives end up. The menu changes constantly around small plates of oysters, charcuterie and cheese with steak and fish for the hungrier, the wine list chases interesting producers, and someone is always pulling records behind the bar. Rustic room, laid-back mood, serious cellar, and the kind of bar where a quick glass has a documented history of becoming three.
Bar Beirut runs the late shift with meze-style Middle Eastern and Mediterranean plates, smoky baba ganoush among the big, bold flavours, and a cocktail list that rotates around a few fixed stars, including a Wasabi Martini. The room hums until late, pulling in nine-to-fivers, locals popping in and out-of-towners in equal measure, and the freshness of the cocktail ingredients is a point of house pride.
How to use all this
A sensible Canberra eating day: pastry and Guatemalan-bean coffee at 85C, laksa with the lunch caucus, charcoal smoke at Akiba, then wine upstairs at Rochford until the records run out. Adjust portfolio allocations to taste: swap the laksa for pho, the barbecue for pizza in Bicicletta’s courtyard, the wine for a Wasabi Martini at Bar Beirut. The blocks are short and the options are dense, so no single wrong turn costs you dinner.
The full ballot
This shortlist leaves out more than it includes, which is the point of a shortlist, and Canberra’s dining rooms turn over fast enough that next year’s version will read differently. The complete field is in the full Canberra food and drink list, and the wider Canberra guide covers the museums, lake loops and galleries between meals.
