The Italian Place Enoteca — Restaurant in District of Canberra Central

Lunch mid September 2025 and what an outstanding meal. I started with the perfectly cooked prawns with a delicious caponata of capsicum, olive, eggplant and chilli - I’ve asked for the recipe but Chef Francesco is keeping it a close secret. But hey that’s why you eat out, to enjoy what you can’t do at home. My husband had the sardines and it was as pretty as a picture and tasted just as good. Then I was overjoyed to see the lobster ravioli back on the menu - pasta so fine and the flavours just out of this world. A generous serving too. My husband had a blackboard special of veal and pork meatballs in a bowl of comforting tomato flavours and crostini to mop it all up. We went the whole hog and I had to have the chocolate tart with caramel chantilly and a crunchy tuille and my husband enjoyed their very generous tiramisu. The tart was a joy to eat - and everything just went so well together. It is extremely hard to find a restaurant that offers a great seasonal menu, exciting blackboard specials and a thoughtful and delicious dessert menu, but you couple that with outstanding service and it’s very hard to go past this restaurant as one of the best in Australia. And you can BYO bottled wine and it’s fully licensed with Italian beer on tap. Thank you again and looking forward to next time.

Lunch Winter 2025 - Chef Francesco was not there due to a temporary medical issue and his staff including the aptly named Angelica (because she looks and cooks like an angel) provided a sumptuous feast that truly exceeded all expectations. Eggplant parmigiana for entree was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten and my husband said his snapper for main was outstanding. Much to my disappointment I had no room for dessert. Thank you for a wonderful lunch and it’s good to know the restaurant is always in safe hands.

For all those visitors or first timers who are umming and ahhing about dining here, I write this for you and your hard-earned dollar, if you dine here you won’t be disappointed and may well have one of the best meals of your life. Apart from the menu online there are blackboard specials. In fact, I don’t know how Chef Francesco does it because his imagination and creativity seems to be boundless. Not only are the meals truly beautiful to look at, sometimes as pretty as a painting, they also taste out of this world. For example - risotto Milanese with veal osso bucco and bone marrow, unbelievably great. Or bread and butter pudding (sounds better in Italian) with Marsala custard and cherries - makes me weak in the knees. Tonight my husband revelled in the deep fried focaccia filled with anchovies and mozzarella and served with a capsicum purée- he gave Chef Francesco the big thumbs up and it was a very generous sized entree. I had grilled prawns with caponata and I was in heaven. Anyhow you can’t go wrong here. Lunch, dinner, BYO bottled wine too. It’s great service, led by Suman and his team and a great atmosphere with exceptionally excellent and imaginative food which isn’t stuffed around with and Chef Francesco simply lets the flavours shine. ...

The Italian Place didn’t remind me of the trendy Italian places that are all around (invariably wood fired pizza and polenta lamb shanks everywhere) but instead felt like I was eating food from the Italy romantically described by Marcella Hazan’s 1970s cookbooks. It felt like an authentic experience, not marred by trend or pretension.

The Burrata cheese on panzanella salad felt like a celebration of fresh ingredients. Zingy vegetables cutting through the creamy cheese, herbaceous but never overpowering basil dressing; enjoying it sitting outside with a glass of red and the Canberra springtime breeze was a wonderfully relaxing experience.

The Agnolotti, slow cooked beef stuffed in pasta, had a gorgeous light glaze of a sauce, I think from reduced mushroom stock. It tasted rustic and the pasta was certainly made in house. This was my friend’s favourite.

We ordered one of the specials (can’t remember the name), it was veal and some kind of cured meat wrapped into little parcels around a Parmesan and herb filling. These were rich, with many different flavours all at once but working in cohesion, and on top of rich beef and bechamel sauces. My (somewhat ignorant) palette found it was like the best flavours of a good lasagne, but with a little extra something in there too.

The olive oil we dipped bread in was bright and fresh, I don’t think I’ve ever had olive oil that tasty. Hardly ever see bread given for free at the start of a meal anymore, it was a lovely and unexpected touch.

They have Italian and local Canberra wines. We had a Gamay and a Shiraz Viognier and both were fantastic.

The service was friendly, professional, again not pretentious, but didn’t feel too “casual” either for what it was. Never felt rushed, attentive but not overbearing, just as it should be. And when we said we would like to share all the dishes that was encouraged.

The decor seemed maaaaybe a tad tired, but really it just has the vibe of a local family place, and I could just bee too used to the slick corporate vibe a lot of higher-end restaurant fit-outs have these days. Sitting outside was lovely.

It’s certainly above the price point of an Italian bistro, but as a lovely spontaneous lunchtime splurge we had been wanting to try for sometime The Italian Place really did impress! It was worth...

We recently vistied this Italian restaurant for lunch and had a mixed experience that leaned more on the disappointing side.

We ordered three dishes: a gamberno entree featureing king prawns, a linguine allo scoglio as our pasta, and a radicchio salad on the side.

The environment itself was quite pleasant; it was quiet lunchtime with very few other dinners, so we didn't even need a reservation. The staff were accommodating in that regard.

However, the quality of the food didn’t match the ambiance or the price point. The gamborino’s prawns, while large and seemingly well-cooked, tasted as though they had been sitting for a few days. They lacked the freshness you’d expect from a high-quality seafood dish. One of my friends, who has a sensitive palate, even noted a slightly off odor and taste, almost as if the prawn was on the verge of going bad. It was surprising and a bit concerning for a restaurant of this caliber.

In contrast, the linguine allo scoglio was actually good. The seafood in the pasta was fresh and the flavors were well-balanced. The marinated vegetables in that dish held up better, and it felt like the one part of the meal that met expectations.

As for the radicchio salad, it was another letdown. The leaves seemed marinated or left in dressing for a very long time, making them soggy and soft. The walnut has gone bad. It gave the impression that the salad had been sitting around pre-dressed for far too long before it reached our table, which definitedly affected the texture and overall enjoyment.

When we mentioned the lack of freshness to the staff, the response was defensive. Rather than acknowledging the issue, they suggested we simply didn’t appreciate the “resources” or didn’t understand the flavor—which, frankly, felt dismissive.

In the end, although they did remove the charge for the salad, the overall experience was underwhelming. For a place that sets itself up as a finer dining option, it felt like we were served reheated or poorly stored food. We left feeling that the restaurant wasn’t serious about quality, which was a real disappointment given the...