Dee Why Hotel

Dee Why Hotel has reopened after a facelift. Usually this involves gutting the place, painting the walls a mushroom colour and putting in some mood lighting and plasma screens. The website extols a rebirth into a "vibrant, eclectic, modern and welcoming bar that maintains the authenticity of the venue's heritage and is a testimony to northern beaches lifestyle". Not entirely true but not untrue either.

THE HOTEL HAS A RATHER UNENVIABLE POSITION on Pittwater Road, squished between two ugly streets and a bland new shopping complex, with the coast nowhere in sight. Considering this, its owners have done something of a "vibrant" job on the place. Huge, sleek timber doors look inviting from the outside. Behind them is a big, open room with various nooks and crannies but the feeling is of a huge food hall. There are tables and chairs in one section, low couches and a fireplace in another, private little booths at one end, tall tables and fancy bar stools in another and so on. Yes, they've done the usual strip-and-replace-with-the-entire-Ikea-catalogue but they have at least tried to cater to different types. A couple of women sit at a wrought-iron table by a big window and enjoy a glass of wine, for example, while families play on the big couches. All look at ease.

BEHIND THE PLACE is a bit of history that some regulars will be sad to see gone. The hotel has been open since the 1920s. In the late '70s it ramped up into a hot nightlife destination and by the late '80s it had transformed into a live-music venue hosting no less than INXS, Midnight Oil, Mental as Anything and Chantoozies.

AS FAR AS FOOD AND DRINK GO, there is nothing to write home about. A wine list is predictable and uninformative but well priced, with six reds and six whites by the glass all under $9. The cocktails are not great. A Passionfruit Lush (vodka, blood orange and passionfruit pulp, $13.50) and an Aperol Sour (Aperol, bitters, lemon juice and gomme, $13.50) are both scarily coloured and taste of many things, alcohol not being one of them. They take an age to make and land on our table with juice dribbling down the side. A surprise highlight is the beautifully salty bianco pizza (sliced potato, rosemary, garlic confit, taleggio cheese, $18). The filling burgers come with tasty, thick fries. What's good is that it's all fairly cheap and fast. If you can find a nice little nook, it's not a bad outing.