The Woods of Windsor

THEY'VE BECOME KNOWN AS slashies - you know, the actor/singer/dancer, or the writer/producer/director. Think of Hugh Jackman, or Lena Dunham of Girls fame. Archetypal slashies. Mortal enemies of the pigeonhole.

The slash is an increasingly valuable tool on the hospo scene. Operators are diversifying; things can be tricky to categorise, and the bar/restaurant clique is becoming crowded. The recent additions of Andrew McConnell et al's Cumulus Up, Guy Grossi's Ombra and Ronnie di Stasio's Bar di Stasio can mean only one thing: the slash scene has received the royal seal of approval.

The Woods of Windsor's website provides no help with adjudicating the ''is it a bar, is it a restaurant?'' debate. A restaurant and bar that ''offers the best in food, libations and service'', it says, although the old-fashioned language is a prod to the retro-hip nature of the place, helped along by staff who are mostly male and very beardy and seem not to believe in changing share plates and cleaning quail bones off the table, possibly because that's such a modern obsession and the Woods is play-acting the Prohibition era. Service annoyances aside, it's the kind of place that is a pleasure to walk into. The Woods has a rare sense of self, a world unto its own golden age of radio soundtrack, the warm tonal delights of plinking pianos and lovelorn gentlemen singing in vibrato, the beaten dark wood of the furniture, the dim lighting and the stuffed animals. It's all there, save the guy who'll swallow the dice if police raid the joint.

It should not surprise that they take their hooch seriously. Whisky gets the most love, with northwards of 50 choices. But if you're here to eat, there is a surprisingly eclectic, Euro-centric wine list that makes more sense. The head chef is Nick Stanton and he wisely gets straight to the point with the snack part of the menu.

Drinkers don't want too much in the way of fancy business, and the duck liver pate wearing a Madeira jelly hat is as trad as it gets. Hit the pig's trotter fritters - fried golf balls of meat and pork jelly, with piquant onion jam, each jauntily topped with a hemisphere of boiled quail egg - so rich they make your heart beat faster, literally.

Moving into deeper menu waters is interesting. It's ''what's food like you doing in a place like this?'' There are fat, pale slices of smoked kingfish decorated with finger lime and avruga, thin rings of fried shallot and batons of compressed celery. A briny and bright dashi dressing brings the whole Japanesque thing home.

Skewers of quail segments on the bone, interspersed with hefty chunks of smoked belly bacon, head in a different direction; the timeless charm of meat on a stick is amped up with the subtle smokiness of burnt onion puree and a maple glaze. The ye olde theme is worked right down to the op-shop crockery and cutlery. Bigger plates include the pork - a square, crackle-hatted puck of perfectly cooked belly and the collapsing softness of glazed long-cooked cheek. The requisite fruit, peach chutney, packs some vinegar sharpness; a little jug of pork juices is amped up with cloves and star anise.

Take heed: it's priced as a restaurant, not a bar. Further on the negatives, Stanton might want to toss a bit more salt around the kitchen and cut back on a few liberties of menu-ese: it's not ''avruga caviar'', for pity's sake, but a fishy concoction trying to double for roe.

Nor do I see the point of writing on the menu about ''hay-baked'' sweet potato when there's nothing about it I can discern that testifies to its hay baking. But the pink slices of duck breast rubbing shoulders with it are pinkly soft, and there are beetroot crisps providing traction, and curried cauliflower happily turns out to be a subtly flavoured puree rather than the bastard child of Anglo-Indian relations. Jolly good indeed.

Desserts manage to keep interest not through being outstandingly original but by being nicely composed things that juxtapose, say, a sharp raspberry sorbet against a rich peanut-butter parfait, or the trifle of summer's-end red berries with a flavour-packed jelly, thick clotted cream and sugared sponge - although the popping candy, which always makes me feel like an aneurysm is brewing, seems like a strange outbreak of juvenilia in what is a very grown-up bar. Or bar/restaurant. You know what I mean.

THE LOW-DOWN

The best bit The speakeasy vibe
The worst bit Waiting for the waiters
Go-to dish Pig's trotter fritters
Wine list Interesting, eclectic selection with a decided preference for Europe
Vegetarian One starter, one entree, one main
Service Friendly, unpolished
Noise Gets a bit shouty
Value Pushes the envelope
Wheelchairs No
Parking Street

Twitter: @LarissaDubecki

How we score
Of 20 points, 10 are awarded for food, five for service, three for ambience, two for wow factor.

12 Reasonable 13 Good if not great 14 Solid and enjoyable 15 Very good 16 Capable of greatness 17 Special 18 Exceptional 19 Extraordinary 20 Perfection

Restaurants are reviewed again for The Age Good Food Guide and scores may vary.