1. Squid ink fried rice with spanner crab & fluffy egg floss: XO Restaurant
Many of Canberra’s best restaurants can be missed with the blink of an eye, and XO is likely the best example of this.
XO is a small, chic, and stylish restaurant in an unpretentious neighborhood shopping area, Narrabundah. The chef, AK Ramakrishna, hails from Malaysia, but is classically French trained and worked at the Mandarin Oriental in Kuala Lumpur before heading to Singapore and Europe, finally landing in Australia.
The restaurant defines itself as “committed to sharing our passion for food and the communal shared-plate culture of Asian dining," and delivers a modern approach to traditional Southeast Asian cuisine that is grounded by an “unwavering commitment to unpretentious, honest food and the highest standards of service.”
Seafood dishes on the menu range from its clay pot fish using Tasmanian ocean trout with caramelized Kampot pepper sauce, or squid with sweet chili salt. But the “can’t take off the menu” dish is the Nasi Goreng-style dish, made with squid ink, spanner crab, and egg floss.
