A bottle shop with a chefs’ hat? This surprising spot lives up to the hoo-ha

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The most conversation-stopping bite of deliciousness I’ve eaten this year (so far) was served inside a Canberra bottle shop. It was a little cheese gougere topped with chives and an Olasagasti anchovy – the ones from the Cantabrian Sea that taste a bit like Vegemite. Crisp, airy, choux pastry; lightly tangy comte custard filling; bright and savoury Meyer lemon miso holding that tiny, single, shining fish in place.

When Paranormal Wines was featured in the Good Food Guide last year, it became the first bottle shop in NSW or the ACT to be awarded a hat. Close Canberra contacts have told me this created a small hoo-ha among a cohort of chefs in the capital, the kind who think candied walnuts and tuiles are cutting-edge cuisine in 2026. “How can it get a hat? It’s just a hipster wine shop that sells a few snacks.” Well. Yes. But.

Reece Inkpen is the chef cooking those snacks and the dude is a talent. He was a sous-chef at the excellent Planque in London, returned to Canberra in 2023 and cooked at two-hatted Pilot before taking over Paranormal’s one-man kitchen.

His short and always-changing menu is fond of an undersell. The “raw beef and XO tartelette”, for instance, is a powerhouse of minced flank steak bolstered by a dressing built on braised beef tendon, fish sauce and white soy. Mackerel bones and ham hock deepen the XO sauce.

The other week, Inkpen was also serving the raw flesh of that blue mackerel (or, at least, one of its close relatives) with a confident dressing of blitzed rockmelon and fermented chilli. Bracing stuff.

This isn’t a 100-per-cent, waste-free shop kitchen-bar, but it’s pretty close, with the odds and ends of meat, fish, fruit and vegetables turned into sausages and ferments. “When Reece started, I said he could buy whatever he wanted; he just couldn’t throw any of it out,” says owner Max Walker (no, not him of How to Puzzle A Python).

Walker opened Paranormal Wines in 2021 and its hyper-coloured artworks, local ceramics and exciting booze also help defibrillate a rather sterile apartment block in a rather sterile part of the city. The chatty bloke spent several years pouring wine at Melbourne’s MoVida Aqui and LP’s Quality Meats (I miss you) in Sydney, and now offers a choice, by-the-glass list for anyone who just wants to hang out in the high-ceilinged space with a splash of Canberra District riesling.

A longer session may lead to opening one of the retail bottles for a $15 “drink-in” fee and loading the table with small plates, such as a tomato salad with strawberries that’s dressed with peach vinegar and tomato-based shio koji (one of Japan’s most magical fermented marinades), plus sunflower-seed salt and marigold leaves on top.

‘How can it get a hat?’ Via intuitive service, building flavour with fermentation, and creating dishes more interesting than those of most other restaurants nearby.

You can pull together a full meal here, too. In late January, long-flavoured Sommerlad heritage-breed chicken was fashioned into a poached ballotine with a little bit of pork fat, thigh trim and garlic miso for good measure, pan-fried to order and plated with a brown butter-enhanced carrot miso puree.

Dessert could be nectarine sorbet fizzing with a pourover of Crémant de Jura sparkling, or lemon verbena ice-cream and blackberries underlined by the earthy caramel of Japan’s Okinawa black sugar.

“How can it get a hat?” Via intuitive service, building flavour with fermentation, and creating dishes more interesting than those of most other restaurants nearby.*

*That said, Canberra still has the best “cracking restaurant to population size” ratio of all Australian capitals, and Bar Rochford, Such and Such, Onzieme, Rebel Rebel and Recess Coffee – plus at least a dozen other places – continue to knock it out of the park every time. Keep an eye out for our full Good Food guide to Canberra in March.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.