The Bellevue

The Bellevue may look like a fine, upstanding corner pub made of bricks and mortar, but no. It's actually built on a foundation of mashed potato, with walls constructed of potato chips. It must be - almost everything I've ever ordered here throughout the years has come with a mountain of potato underneath or on the side.

Tonight, the coiled sausage of pork, veal and chilli comes with mash. So does the corned wagyu silverside with white sauce, as do the crumbed lamb cutlets. And would you like chips with that? The deep-fried market fish comes with chips, as does the steak Diane and the chargrilled black angus scotch. And just in case you accidentally order one of the few things without potato - not easy to do - chips and mash are available as side orders.

This spud dependency is consistent with the modus operandi of the great Australian pub, along with draft beer, a cosy front bar, sport on the telly and the inevitable pokies off to the side. The Bellevue is no different but for two things: it's in Paddington, so it's a bit less schnitzel and a bit more charcuterie, and it has former Bistro Moncur owner - and, incidentally, former Bellevue Hotel owner - Damien Pignolet on the books as executive chef. Pignolet now acts as a kind of curator, working with head chef Nathan Lakeman on a menu drawn from the archives of both.

Put aside the trend for small plates and sharing, because everything is big here. What can be a scrawny portion of deep-fried calamari elsewhere covers the plate here with long, looping shards of pale, softly tender squid ($18.50), teamed with hunks of crisper soft-shell crab and a mild aioli on the side.

A wintry-sounding salad of watercress, Swiss brown mushrooms, avocado, shaved artichokes, walnuts and broad beans ($18.50) is also substantial, the disparate ingredients linked by their seasonality and a lovely walnut vinaigrette.

A blast-from-the-past steak Diane ($36) is retirement-home tender, the evenly sliced meat lightly pan-fried and doused in buttery Worcestery, parsley-flecked juices. Yep, it shares the plate with a massive pile of long, golden chips.

One menu newcomer bravely swaps potato for white beans. Toulouse cassoulet ($38.50) comes in a large terracotta pot, an edible landscape of chunks of duck confit, a dense little pork sausage, beans and the bonus of a square of pork belly, meltingly soft under its crisp skin. The carpet of breadcrumbs on top tends to suck up a lot of the juices, leaving the whole thing feeling a bit dry.

As at Pignolet's former stomping ground, Bistro Moncur, the wine list rises above the pub basics with a well-sourced, globally roaming list that includes a rich and gamey 2008 Northburn Station Pinot Noir from central Otago ($65).

Dessert is pure class; a Pignolet-inspired, very chocolatey chocolate and almond cake with a spoonful of delectably cognac-laden chocolate mousse and another of cream ($16). The dessert menu suggests lingering with a little something fortified, and there's a healthy list of port, the chosen tipple of the dining dinosaur.

The comfy, come-as-you-are room is one of those added-on spaces that has become permanent, with its small step down that gets you every time, white-painted brick walls and atrium-like glass ceiling. Framed illustrated maps of a chicken, pig and cow suggest the Bellevue would not be the vegetarian's first choice, something confirmed by a menu in which a vegetarian pasta of garlic, chilli, tomatoes, grilled red capsicums and parmesan reads as an afterthought.

It's all good, clean fun without being overly memorable, rolled along nicely with cheery, adaptable service. The only thing that gives me pause is that so much of the food is tender - like, really tender, like, teeth aren't exactly mandatory. Could it be the ageing generation of baby boomers - the only people with disposable dollars - are still writing the agenda, still getting things their way, and their way now has to be softer and easier to digest?

Put together the big portions, the mountains of mash, the glasses of port, and it suddenly becomes obvious: this is an honest-to-goodness, unreconstructed, last-gen, local neighbourhood pub. When you consider what's happening to the pub scene in Sydney, at reinvented eating and drinking houses such as Four In Hand Hotel, Forrester's, the Carrington, the Flinders and the Paddington Arms, the Bellevue is fighting the good fight to be just a decent local pub, nothing more, nothing less.

tdurack@smh.com.au

The low-down

Best bit Cheery pub dining-room atmosphere.

Worst bit Potential potato overload.

Go-to dish Steak Diane with chips, $36.

The Bellevue 

Address 159 Hargrave Street, Paddington, 9363 2293, bellevuehotel.com.au.
Open Lunch, Tues-Fri; dinner, Mon-Sat.
Licensed Yes.
Cost About $125 for two, plus wine.

Terry Durack is co-editor of The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide.