Osteria Mbare

Walk into Osteria Mbare and you're immediately in that sweet spot where the kitchen takes itself seriously but the room doesn't take itself seriously at all. You'll find yourself wedged between locals and first-daters, all of you eating the same kind of food your Italian mate's nonna would recognise. The menu moves with the seasons, which means you're not getting the same tired pasta carbonara you could make at home—though when they do run carbonara, it's the sort that makes you understand why people write poems about it. Service has that relaxed confidence that only comes when a restaurant knows exactly what it's doing.