You know you’re doing something right when casual passersbys contemplate cancelling their dinner reservations elsewhere to linger just that little bit longer.
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Terra, fast becoming one of Canberra’s favourite lunch spots, is now staying up late to serve dinner Thursday to Saturday and already it’s attracting a steady clientele.
“We've had a fair few people in the last couple of weeks dropping in and having a couple of wines on their way somewhere,” says co-owner Anthony Iannelli.
“They’ll notice that we’ve got the lights on, pop in for a drink, order a few wines and look at the menu and wonder whether they should stay.”
Dinner was always on the agenda for the Terra team, says Iannelli, opening in late June for breakfast and lunch, it was only a matter of time.
“We didn't want to be one of those places that opened and tried to do too much from the start,” he says.
“It was a new venue, with a new team, we wanted to open, do lunch, get that to 100 per cent, make sure everyone is happy, make sure everyone knows what they're doing and we wanted to put a lot of time and effort into the dinner menu.”
Like lunch, the Terra dinner menu is an ever changing thing, dependent on what’s looking good at the markets, what’s fresh, what’s got the Iannelli brothers intrigued.
Anthony and his brother Marcus head up to the markets weekly and surprise head chef Sung Son on a regular basis.
“I phoned him yesterday and said you’ve got tomatilloes and white asparagus to work with this week, get thinking,” says Iannelli.
Son is relishing producing a dinner menu. When I visit it’s stuck on the front door with a piece of duct tape.
The house-made flatbread with duck liver parfait and dill pickles, confit salmon in a jar, dry aged beef, spit roasted pork belly on the bone with the house-made sauerkraut, deep fried cheesecake with banana custard. But it could all be different this week. That’s half the joy of it.
“Dinner is one step above the lunch menu,” says Iannelli.
“It's more refined, there are more elements. For example, there's a mushroom dish on at dinner and it’s six mushrooms done three ways, we couldn't go to that much trouble at lunch.
“It's not a higher standard of food but there's more technique and thought put into it.
“At lunch it’s more it’s tasty and good and it’s in season, at dinner we’re trying to take it to that next level.
“Our philosophy is the same but we’re stepping it up.”
Terra, No Name Lane, 40 Marcus Clarke Street, Canberra city. Open Monday to Friday, 7.30am-4pm and Saturday, 8am-4pm. Dinners Thursday to Saturday, 5.30pm to late. terracanberra.com.au
