IT’S insightful to hear a chef from Sydney, with a respectable pedigree and international experience, talking about working in Canberra.

Renowned chef Griff Pamment is dishing up some pretty fabulous food at the pop-up restaurant at The Loft at Duxton.

Here’s my advice. Make a booking now. And you’d be wise to just put your meal in Pamment’s hands by ordering the Chef’s Selection ($55 per person), a sharing-style banquet designed for the whole table.

While Pamment is only here until the end of June (he returns to Sydney for personal reasons), the restaurant has a strong team that has been gaining traction since it opened. So it looks like it’s going to stay open until at least the end of July.

Pamment has been around the traps. He has worked as creative and culinary director at Bill’s Restaurants International. He’s chopped his way through Sydney’s Rockpool and Billy Kwong.

So what does Pamment think of the capital’s food scene?

“In Sydney and elsewhere ‘seasonal’ and ‘regional produce’ are often buzzwords, but it’s rewarding to apply discipline in buying fish from Bermagui, local truffles or even fresh peppers from a grower just up the street,” says the chef.

“It brought me back to the joy of cooking.”

Pamment says restaurants here should play to Canberra strengths: “Some emulate what is happening overseas, but there is a ‘Canberra style’. Be proud of what you can put on plates here.”

Upstairs at The Loft we discovered a warm, cosy bar and a restaurant complete with white tablecloths. The service is excellent. The staff highly knowledgeable. The wine list great. And the food superb.

The sautéed heirloom peppers, sourced from a grower just up from the restaurant (you can’t get fresher than that), were sensational with goat’s cheese and crunchy walnuts ($14). The spiced parsnip soup ($12) was a comforting winter warmer. The brussels sprouts Caesar salad with poached egg and bacon bits ($14) was delightfully different – a nice twist on a classic dish, and why not?

The fish pie (with the pastry on top shaped into fish scales) was sensational as was its accompanying pea mash. If you love top-notch beef, order the Trinity, grass-fed scotch steak with the best-ever roasted marrow bones. Decadent.

And as for the chilli chocolate ganache with salted peanut brittle and mulled wine pears, and the blue cheese bavarois with rye crisps and chilled grapes (each $12)? We soared straight to heaven.

The Loft is highly accommodating with the kitchen happy to adjust for dietary requirements.

O’Connor shops, open Wednesday-Friday for lunch and Tuesday-Saturday for dinner. Be patient when booking. If no one answers 6247 7330 you get an annoying: “We can’t take your message. Try again later”. Isn’t this the hospitality business?