It's a reflective occasion to be dining here on the seventh last Saturday night service at Temporada, with the final service on May 18. It's a venue which has been at the top of the charts for the last decade.

I bumped into an old friend during the week who I saw dining here last time we visited, and he's mortified that this place is closing. For him and his wife, this was "their" restaurant. Originally launched by Ben Willis as a more casual cousin of fine diner Aubergine, Young took over a few years back as the sole owner and head chef. To draw a musical analogy with one of the greatest rock bands of all time, Willis was the "Kurt Cobain" of this group. There was also Chris Darragh who ran the kitchen in the early days. Let's refer to him as "Krist Novoselic". But Young is the "Dave Grohl" of Temporada, propelling it just like the Foo Fighters into a different direction since 2019.

Young is one of the best chefs to cook up a dinner party in Canberra this century. We've had our Willises, Kayas, AKs, McConnells, Chauvins, Armstrongs, Lundys, Hanslows and Couttoupes. I've missed a few, but there is no doubt in my mind that Young sits well inside the top 10 best chefs to flip the pans and tend a grill in Canberra for the past decade. In the 2019 end-of-year-dining wrap, Food and Wine editor Karen Hardy gave Temporada a rap as her favourite restaurant of the year.

The venue is rectangular and still clad with the vanilla fencepost walls, hanging Thomas Edison light bulbs and a long row of ... whatever. You've all been there before.

For the final weeks, Young is featuring a menu that cycles through several of the classic dishes from the past decade, listed in the menu and referenced by the year of production, in the same way an artwork might be, at the National Gallery of Australia.

Four cheese tapioca fritters with salsa verde (2018) are $6 each and look like large scrabble tiles, perfectly crunchy, starchy, sticky and unctuous. The salsa verde is piercingly herbaceous and citrusy.

Charcoal grilled scallop with black bean vinaigrette (2020) ($14) spins in and the butter-based dressing hits extreme umami notes.

Citrus marinated chicken skewer with furikake and charred lime (2020) ($10) has the charcoal grill smell, taste and hallmarks of a Singapore night market. In a city where so many menus now serve up great dishes cooked over fire, Temporada has been doing it for a decade.

We wash this down with a glass of BK 2021 Chardonnay ($17) which has full peach and nashi pear at the top and exceptional texture from carbonic whole bunch maceration. Ok, I didn't need to add the last four words there, but trust me, it's delicious.

It leads us nicely into the charcoal grilled wagyu intercostal with nashi, sesame leaves and hot bean paste (2019) ($38). The beef has great, almost slow-cooked-brisket-like texture and the punch comes from the gochujang, which is a fire-engine-red chilli paste made with glutinous rice, fermented soybeans, salt and a touch of sweetness. It's thick, sticky, spicy and pungent. Nashi pears are sliced and laid like feathers across the top. Like the Foo Fighters, the ingredients sound great when they perform together. This dish tastes a lot like Best of You.

The roast cauliflower ravioli with golden raisins, brown butter and pecorino (2022) ($36) is a classic flavoured dish, arriving as five perfect parcels, wrapped like old-fashioned bon bons from the milk bar. They haven't reinvented the wheel here, but they have given it a much-improved alignment.

Roast lamb shoulder with lemon pepper dressing and Italian coleslaw (2014), $50 for a half, is another classic dish that was probably not yet so back in 2014. This was well before the time that restaurants started pumping out plates of slow-cooked lamb shoulder on banquet menus. The acidity of the slaw really makes the dish and this has all the flavours of a long Sunday lunch, on a Saturday night.

Charcoal grilled corn with romesco, halloumi, black pepper butter, chilli and garlic crunch (2018) ($16) could be straight out of the Movida kitchen in Melbourne.

Dessert is "Jack's mistake", which was (and is) chocolate cake with vanilla cream, rhubarb and hazelnut crunch ($20). It's a tribute to a young kitchen staff member who messed up a dessert so badly one time in 2020, that somehow, it tasted good. Even our mistakes can become triumphs, depending on how you look at them.

Good things do come to an end. But not everyone gets the luxury of retiring whilst they are still high up in the charts. And as with most of the greatest players, Young will no doubt pop up again, somewhere, leading another band of talented chefs. But if this was "your" restaurant, you only have a few short weeks to return to Temporada for a final visit. And if this wasn't "your" restaurant, get back anyway and see one of the great kitchen artists of the decade perform some of his greatest hits.

Address: 15 Moore Street, Canberra

Phone: 6249 6683

Website: temporada.com.au

Hours: Lunch, Friday, noon until 2.30pm; Dinner Tuesday to Saturday, from 5pm

Chef: Dave Young

Noise: Not an issue

Dietary: Mention when booking. Some good vegetarian dishes