My accountant is a nice guy and keeps things fast, simple and conservative, which is why we keep returning, despite the location where he does his thing, which was almost enough first time to turn and run. It's not that there's anything wrong with the Southlands shopping centre in itself. It's pretty much like any other oddly barren, supermarket-centred, surprisingly located and architecturally bereft Canberra shopping centre. It's more the sheer distance from the northside where we live, which adds a tyranny of distance to the tyranny of sorting files and receipts and obscure semi-legible and utterly incomprehensible notes-to-self at tax time.

Still, the parking's easy. As we find tonight when we pull into the Southlands shopping centre to look for Olive, a place not long opened to which we have been sent by an editor determined that the days of returning over and again to familiar city restaurants are over. We will travel to the outskirts and seek out the lesser known.

Olive is as easy to find as the parking space and much more welcoming. It's warm, smallish, sparkling with gentle light, the tables covered in white cloths, the chairs draped in black. The menu is small, which is good to see, with a few specials on a separate sheet of paper. Among the specials, the pork belly looks out of place in a restaurant whose influence combines Italian and Greek, familiar dishes to Australians. We steer clear of it, but the liver ($24.50) cannot be overlooked. There it sits on the specials list as a must order, and there it sits piled on the plate, full of charry dark flavour, firm and fresh slices of liver, with bacon and mushrooms and a sticky sauce. Served on mash, with crunchy fresh beans and broccoli, this is a great, happy, simple meal that we enjoy a lot.

Reversing briefly, we began with a board of fresh Turkish bread ($5), light and soft, crispy, and with good olive oil and balsamic. The fried olives ($9) are not as good, probably because of the less than distinguished quality of the green olives themselves, which have that deli-olive taint about them. A shame, since there's nothing wrong with handling of these olives. Stuffed, lightly crumbed and fried, and served with a yoghurt fresh with fennel. Yoghurt sauce also is alongside the "traditional meatballs" ($16), flat patties, lean, pleasant and herby.

The suppli ($16) are fine little risotto balls, "buffalo cheese" inside, and like the olives lightly treated. The mayonnaise is an unexpected accompaniment.The mains list here has a few pastas, and a bunch of meats. We order our way through the latter, with veal and lamb as well as the liver. The veal medallions ($30) are firm but perfectly tender flat little hunks of meat, nicely cooked like the liver, gently caramelised, with a sticky lemon sauce, sweet but not overwhelmingly so. It's enjoyable, and another decent meal on its mash with beans and broccoli.

Beans and broccoli also come with the lamb, and we're not unhappy at all about this. They're crunchy and a good accompaniment. The lamb shoulder ($30) is a big piece of meat on the bone, gelatinous, intense, falling gently on to the fork, full of satisfying slipperiness and fat, and left largely to its own lamby devices. This is the favourite meal at our table.We haven't tried the pastas tonight, but we do check out the pizzas. There are just three on offer, all thankfully simple. The margherita is an oblong of Turkish-style base, puffy, soft, fresh and bready with a loads-of-cheese topping, and another well-enjoyed dish.

The wine list, like the menu, is short and well suited to the place we're at. It's very good value, also, with most of the bottles around the $40 mark, and with enough interesting drinking and plenty offered by the glass. Service has been friendly and willing, if not highly informed (a question about the wine brought the unhelpful response that it was a white). It has also been very fast, dishes arriving pronto.

Desserts (all $12) let things down, with a feel of being pre-made and having sat around in a fridge somewhere rather longer than you would wish. The tiramisu is dry with a hard chocolate seal, and not the creamy luxurious rich kind of tiramisu we dream about in weak moments. The ice-cream is not made on site, we're told, and it's not distinguished. The creme brulee likewise is not creamy or custardy, not in the leastluxurious, but rather solid. But for the desserts, we have been really happy with our meal at Olive, which is run by the family that also ran the restaurant at the Hellenic Club, and surprised at the discovery of such a pleasant, busy and decent place out of the main drag. 

You'd come here happily as a regular if you lived in Woden. Fast and simple, like my tax. Conservative, too, in the sense of not taking risks or getting too creative or experimental – something you always want in an accountant's approach to your books, and quite often welcome on the plate. Not too much faffing with the food. With some attention to desserts, you'd have to think Olive should carve a successful niche for itself on this side of the city.