There has to be a planning PhD in Canberra's shopping centres, which have such a clear and unmistakable hierarchy and logic to them, but such a mad disconnect. Each suburb has its box-set shopping centre, one main street frontage, half a dozen or so shops in a row. Each cluster of suburbs has its "group centre", with a big carpark,  mini-mall, and anchor supermarket tenant. Each shopping centre is built at one time so set to age disgracefully in one go, and thus entirely missing the architecture of young and old, the piecemeal rejuvenation of shopping centres that have developed naturally over time.

This isn't a statement uniquely about the Weston Creek group centre, but serves as a preamble to what is essentially the box-set group centre. Where one of the inevitable finds is the Canberra version of what is fancily called a "gastro pub" - a place where families meet on the weekend for a drink and burger, an alternative to the local club.

So here we are, not at our local  but well across the city, at the Meating Room. It is in a kind of sunken room in a functional building that looks to have an indoor cricket space upstairs, so plenty of activity - and easy parking. The owners have made an effort with the space, using concrete and "industrial chic" to give a sense of being both cosy and modern. I like the yellow milk crates hung in two rows over the bar, with red pipework. There's exposed concrete reinforcing on part of the roof; on another part the concrete is there also. And there's a children's play nook, which to parents at the end of a working week it no doubt a very welcome thing.

We're not quite getting the "cool, eclectic elegance of a 1920s Chicago speakeasy ... seamlessly blended with modern industrial chic" as promised on the menu, but given the activity tonight, it's clear Meating Room is a place the locals want to be. This place is full of families and noise, and a couple of big screens keep you in touch with the weekend sport. 

Generosity is the theme in the menu. It is more ambitious than many pub-style menus, and the food is on the whole better than many of this style of place we've eaten at recently. Especially in the starters. We like the pulled pork sliders ($13 for two), two little one-hand burgers, in a soft, hardly-there bun, with a filling of coleslaw and pork that has been shredded like candy floss and crisped.

The arancini balls ($13) are likewise good - rice balls filled, according to the menu, with mushrooms, pumpkin and goat's cheese, with a panko crust, and served with garlic aioli and shaved parmesan. They're not the super-sticky and oozy version of arancini, but they're decent, light and likeable.

Both of these entrees have been quite delicate, not teensy, but a sensible size that we can handle, which is welcome. But from here on in, very big serves are the order of the day.

Bangers and mash ($24) is a big plate of mashed potato - covered in peas and mash with three huge sausages. We're drawn to this by the promise of housemade beef and pork sausages, but they're very salty to taste and not greatly exciting, and the sheer size is overwhelming. The mash is good; the jus tastes aggressively of wine.

We order the six-hour braised beef short ribs ($33) because the menu promises them as a speciality. What arrives is a big plate of big meat - large bones with tender, fatty and shreddy meat, which appears to have had the smoke treatment. The meat is super tender and the dish speaks for itself, a dish for people with a big appetite for relatively unadorned meat. The warning is right there in the name of the restaurant, it's all about the meat. The ribs served are on top of big wedges of potato, fried up as chips. 

We're ordered unusually here, I think, by aiming for an entree dish and a main - as it happens we would have been quite happy with a couple of entrees, and the burger menu reads well. We know we've done something unusual when the starters and mains arrive all at once. 

And of course, we're not leaving without a look at the dessert menu - avoiding the deep-fried Mars Bar cheesecake, we order a "sticky date sandwich" ($14) and chocolate mousse ($14). The desserts are, unsurprisingly by now, huge. The sticky date pudding has been reinvented as a rather dry date slice, which is a little disappointing given the messy excellence that this pudding offers in its sticky version. This is, we guess, so it can be sliced and made into a sandwich, with ice cream between - two sandwiches, in fact. But the ice cream doesn't taste homemade, and I think this dessert would be better if it aimed to be a small luxurious dessert.

The mousse is sweet and light, enjoyable until the sweetness begins to hit, with a layer of raspberry at the bottom of the glass that keeps you eating through the chocolate to reach.

The wine list keeps things simple, with low prices, as you would expect in this kind of casual venue.

Meating Room is essentially a local pub and eatery, with plenty of activity and enthusiasm, undoubted generosity and a more ambitious menu than many.