Cafe Altenberg

We like most of the inland country towns near Canberra - like Bungendore, Cobargo, Milton, and, of course, Braidwood. They try that much harder than their coastal cousins and seem to attract a different type of resident than the seachangers of the South Coast. Instead of bland suburbia-upon-sea, punctuated by the gin palaces of successful mobile phone store owners and quantity surveyors, the stores and houses inland towns are generally older and evocative of the unknown country of the past. Similarly, more frequently among their residents are those who have sought to escape from Babylon rather than desiring to reproduce it.

Long a favourite stop for pies and ice creams for Canberrans on their ways to the coast, Braidwood seems to be going through a gentrification process, as various members of the monied classes follow one another in setting up homeware, antique, and 2nd-hand book shops and cafes along its main drag. Among this milleu, Cafe Altenberg can be found in a pleasantly shaded courtyard behind a gallery selling fairly generic contemporary art. When we visited on a somewhat busy on a Saturday afternoon, we were confronted with a friendly front of house waitress, and a clearly agitated cook mumbling to herself and purposefully slamming and rattling various kitchen implements. We thought we heard something about the flyscreen not being shut properly... Anyway, undeterred, we ordered and generally enjoyed a falafel salad and a Moroccan lamb pie. At $17, the latter was on the expensive side, and a little average, but the salad was OK at $12 and enormous. Both dishes were treated with a tasty, if slightly sickly sweet, dressing.

Overall, good if not great.