Silks

Silks. Dinner time. Mid-week. We're on whale watch, hoping to catch sight of the legendary high rollers in their native habitat of plush furnishings, gold-plated lamps and acres of polished wood. Tonight our prey is elusive. The four inhabitants of the neighbouring table dress for comfort, order sweet and sour pork, lemon chicken and fried rice (''no prawns in the rice'') and wash it down with bourbon and Coke. There's a quiet Sikh Couplus honeymoonus on the other side. Nothing to rival the memory of rowdy Chinese businessmen celebrating a deal, clinking glasses of Bordeaux over glinting, translucent lobster sashimi.

Whale and minnows alike, it's unlikely diners are here thanks to news that Silks' latest chef comes toting Michelin baggage - two stars from his previous hotel gig in Hong Kong. No offence to Tsang Chiu King. Occidental restaurants turn chefs into cults, Oriental restaurants get on with the business of serving food in the quaint belief the entity is more than the individual. A relief, on the whole, although on the flipside I've dispiritingly often walked away from the city's glamorous Chinese restaurants feeling cold despite the strenuous effort of engaging staff on the menu's more exotic byways.

Anyway, credit to chef Tsang. The food at Silks is the best it's ever been, and a refreshed management level is trying hard to break free from the worker bees' phlegmatic politeness.

They still serve the cliches of Chinese - Cantonese - cuisine. They do them very well. Tsang's bent is refined Canto with a twist of Hong Kong international, although a good showing of regional variations - particularly northern - is sprinkled around to (literally) spice things up.

You can't go wrong with the dim sum, gold standards of the dumpling art courtesy of the specialist chef Tsang brought with him from Honkers. Translucent football-shaped numbers are so densely packed with prawn meat, steamed egg white and conpoy - dried scallop - to give pause for wonder they don't burst on the journey from bamboo steamer to bowl. Perfection. Sluice them, like most things here, with a slightly sour black vinegar, the Chinese balsamic. The duck ravioli are voluptuously silken things - seriously tasty pucks of duck pleated into slippery house-made yellow wonton skins, floating in chicken and duck consomme with a silken egg custard unexpectedly lining the bottom of the bowl. The textures are sublime.

You can certainly eat well here, for the kind of money that helps balance the Packer ledger, but I can't shake the feeling Crown's hoity-toity glam Chinese diner - surely a loss leader? - begets a gustatory Stockholm syndrome.

The wine list is ambitious in scope and pricing

At $65, a scallop and sea urchin omelet should go beyond the merely pleasant to light up the room like the casino fireballs with briny, fresh-from-the-ocean funk. Arriving on its heels, two lamb cutlets at $28 seem like a Boxing Day bargain thanks to the quality of the produce and the cumin-accented jelly of a sauce umami-fied with abalone masterstock.

The menu is so broad - 14 pages, more than 120 items - assessing it feels like the parable of four blind men describing an elephant. The tiny dent we made veered from the surprisingly fashionable - fried oysters perched on fried onion rings with salt and black vinegar (cute, but not the kitchen at its best) to the more typical - a $15 cucumber appetiser jollied up with crushed raw garlic. An assorted barbecue plate rises above its simplicity to command attention, opposing hot (toffee-skinned roasted duck; char siu pork) with cold (salty, thin slices of cartilaginous beef shin braised in soy and herbs; the textural surprise of jellyfish in a smooth chilli slick of sesame oil). Mango custard in spring roll-styled pastries scattered with roasted almond flakes shows genuine effort at the dessert end of things without any really high-kicking imagination.

A decade old, Silks remains as well maintained as some of the clientele. It feels a long way from the gaming floor, yet no one will bat an eyelid if you want to blow $200 on dinner while wearing a baseball cap, or match your lobster with Bordeaux (liberating or depressing? You be the judge). As for the food, the potential for greatness is palpable but at prices guaranteed to give anyone but high rollers the bends - well, it's a gamble.

Twitter: @LarissaDubecki or ldubecki@fairfaxmedia.com.au

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.