It’s not every day you get to dine in a giant bird cage, or at least what looks like one, but that’s just what my friends and I got to do at The Elk & Pea Eating House, one of Canberra’s newest eateries.

While the décor of some establishments has nothing to do with the name (for example, I’ve never seen an elephant or a wheelbarrow at the Elephant & Wheelbarrow), the same cannot be said for The Elk & Pea. Although, if you’re like me—even after looking at their website, which has their logo on it—you may for some reason imagine an elk and a little round cartoon pea with a face, until you get there, start looking around, notice birds, realise they’re peacocks and think, ‘Elk & Peacock? Elk & Cock? Oh, I get it, Elk and Pea!’ (in my defence, I’d had a long day at work. And I was hungry). It’s definitely the only place I know where a discussion about going to the loo starts with “The elk one is better than the peacock one” (you will have to go yourself to see what I mean).

But I digress. The most important thing in an eating house, is, obviously, the food. And I’m pleased to say that the food was good. I went with four others, which, apart from the excellent company, was great because more people means you get to try more food. Most of the menu is designed for sharing, which was ideal for our little group.

It didn’t take us long to decide, and we ended up ordering the following:

• potato wedges and guacamole
• corn and zucchini fritters, which also came with a salad and amazing pepito dressing
• pepitas (roasted pumpkin seeds, chipotle, salted lime)
• goat enchiladas
• sticky pork spare ribs
• jerk chicken
• market fish (we had chimi churri swordfish) with quinoa salad.

Of those, my favourites were the potato wedges and guacamole, the goat enchiladas and the spare ribs, while some of my friends favoured the addictive pepitas and the fritters. The fish was the dish we liked the least (I’ve since heard from other friends that the fish taco was also subpar compared to the meat and veggie dishes), but one out of seven isn’t bad.

While most of us could only fit in a drink after all that, my friend’s boyfriend ordered the chilli chocolate mousse with mango salsa, which I had a little taste of and found to be light, fluffy and delicious. I’m definitely saving room for dessert next time.

One of my friends is allergic to nuts and eggs, so another thing worth mentioning is how helpful our waitress was when informed of this. She went and checked with the kitchen if these were in any of the dishes we wanted to order and then told us how dishes might be varied to accommodate this, e.g. putting the almond puree that came with the jerk chicken, on the side. While they did forget to leave the walnuts out of the quinoa salad, we appreciated the effort with the other dishes and also the reminders about which ones contained egg and nuts when they were brought out.

All in all, my friends and I enjoyed our first Elk & Pea outing, and we’ll definitely be back, not just for the food but for a better look at the picture gallery on the ceiling (another thing you’ll have to see for yourselves!).