Orita's

Score: 14/20

I DIDN'T expect a big welcome at Orita's. A case of, "What if he recognises me, and vents?" We went ahead anyway, up the stairs and through the heavy glass entrance via an elegant stone and pebble walkway.

The last review, six years ago, reached what I thought at the time (and still do) to be a perfectly fair conclusion: not recommended.

In the intervening years, this smart Toorak modern Japanese fusion (their words) salon has acquired a league of loyalists.

But maybe they don't have the same memories I have. Of a clueless waiter using a headset radio microphone to place orders; of a daft, difficult-to-follow menu; of food that tried so desperately hard to bridge the gap between Europe and Japan as to be silly.

This is how I reported a main course at the time: "One consisted of three flattened grilled lamb cutlets seasoned with sansho pepper. It peppered the plate, too. Curled around the rim of the plate was a large garlic chive with flower making a smiley face to the diner, a piece of turned carrot, some pine nuts, a piece of pumpkin cooked in bonito broth and, yes, a baked potato in foil."

No wonder it took six years to darken Orita's door again. Yet - and the point was made at the time - there was a light of potential hiding beneath the bushel.

And since then, the chef-owner has learned a bit.

The place still looks terrific, with heavy timbers and stone providing a highly effective modern look with a subtle Japanese accent. Renovations have provided a balcony overlooking Jackson Street. And most vestiges of silly service have gone, although each waiter still dons a single white cotton glove to deliver plates.

The music provides a clue to the restaurant's identity: we arrive to Miles Davis and leave to Dave Brubeck and in between, the greats of '50s and '60s progressive jazz do their thing. Orita's is where the koto and the vibraphone meet, a sometimes delicious, sometimes questionable fusion of cultures.

While some dishes - an assortment of fairly straight sushi and sashimi, for example - come with a clear identity and, therefore, an understood protocol for eating, "main dishes" do a little switcheroo back to European. And that's how most of Orita's guests seem to eat: sharing something, then having a self-contained main course for themselves, each with a protein centre and satellite vegetables and carbs.

We did reasonably well ordering the sushi/sashimi and a series of main courses, asking that they come progressively for sharing (a major problem last time). They did, but the plating is skewed towards one diner, one dish.

It starts with a creamy, peppery potato salad amuse-bouche (literally "mouth amuser"), served on a pale prawn cracker with a brown miso-ish sauce. This sets the Euro tone.

The fish and sushi ($39) is fine, without proving exceptional: tuna, salmon (excellent) and kingfish with cooked tuna and avocado California rolls, ocean trout and prawn nigirisushi. And too much curly parsley with baby nasturtium flowers. Compared to Taxi or Shoya's versions of the same thing, it's a little unimaginative.

The highlight, unquestionably, is Orita's pigeon ($31): miso marinated, it is then "low-heat vacuum-cooked Orita's way", according to the menu, and quickly char-grilled to order. It comes with a decidedly piquant red miso sauce with white sesame seeds of great complexity.

The semi-boned bird is both rare and thoroughly cooked, revealing exceptional texture, flavour and moistness beneath a crisp skin. With its sauteed garlic chives, wedge of home-grown Jap pumpkin and garnish of shredded green (spring) onion, this is a wondrous dish.

A generous portion of good chicken breast is steamed with sake, broadly sliced and served with a rather intriguing black sesame sauce, julienne cucumber and a number of hot vegetables ($28). As a single main course for one, it would be too large; as a dish to share between two or more, all the accessory vegetables get in the way a bit.

"Orita's famous stewed beef spare rib" ($32) left me wondering how the pigeon got bumped. This is a piece of boned meat that has been stewed in all sorts of Japanese flavours; the meat was vaguely stringy, lacked any gelatinous mouthfeel, and had failed to take on sufficient flavour from its cooking. Served with a starchy Japanese fritter of some kind, bean shoots, baby spinach, a brown miso-ish sauce and a bed of mashed potato, it seemed to me the price of fame had been somewhat devalued.

Two large and quite exceptional prawns are split and semi-shelled before hitting the teppanyaki; they're basted with a soy and piquant oil sauce, accentuating the bright orange colour of the delicious little crustaceans, before being served with slices of tempura pumpkin and shiitake, some pickled red cabbage and some boiled sweet potato ($29).

I guess if anything sums up Orita's, it is dessert: great flavour and fine produce hiding behind the excessive presentation devices of an earlier culinary time.

In this case, it's sublimely intense apricot halves cooked in some magical way, with a piping of purple sweet potato puree, a tiny orb of apricot ice-cream, and a wafer. On the plate, drops of berry syrup and more piped quenelles of that potato, one with a nasturtium flower garnish, the other with baby mint ($13). It's interesting, but it's passe.

From where it was six years ago, this is a restaurant that has progressed enormously (with direct and professional service) and if the concept were restructured, to get away from this entree/main/dessert Western notion, I'd be going back well before the next six years were up.

Score: 1-9: Unacceptable. 10-11: Just OK, some shortcomings. 12: Fair. 13: Getting there. 14: Recommended. 15: Good. 16: Really good. 17: Truly excellent. 18: Outstanding. 19-20: Approaching perfection, Victoria's best.