Three Blue Ducks

"No stress," says the cheery bloke on the floor when I put in an order. He's right, too. Nobody seems to stress out much at Three Blue Ducks, newly opened in the old Kitchen by Mike space in a Rosebery design warehouse. It's just not their style.

Instead, Chief Duckies Mark LaBrooy and Darren Robertson are in the open kitchen having a laugh, waitstaff wander through the long, bare tables bringing Iggy's bread and house-cultured butter, and groups of two, four, and 20 bond over share plates of no-fuss seasonal tucker.

It's this chill-out factor that links the Ducks' laid-back Bronte cafe to their rustic farmhouse diner at Byron Bay to this latest offering in Sydney's post-industrial inner south. Ironically, Robertson and LaBrooy forged their careers in Tetsuya's state-of-the-art fine dining kitchen. Now? Their flash combi-oven sits unloved, as the boys hover over their wood-fired oven, charcoal fire pit and a half-tonne Argentinean-style barbecue called Bob. Few things are left untouched by fire, apart from the diners, who get just a few strip heaters and rugs to ward off the winter chill. Even the base stocks are left in the residual heat of the oven overnight.

Firewood is stored up against the high concrete walls, and big arty panels screen the less attractive mechanics of the kitchen from view. The Ducks have also installed a reservations system (adios, queues), a separate coffee-driven cafe, a produce store, and MasterChef 2012 winner Andy Allen, who comes on board as partner and chef.

What you see is pretty much what you get – things like whole fish and roast-vegie bowls – and is all the better for it. There's a terrific sweet potato hummus strewn with charred onions and served with lovely focaccia ($13), and a single charred blue mackerel ($15) with velvety eggplant puree and labne ($15). Piri piri chicken ($32) is a half chook, firmly cooked and daubed with convincingly hot, fruity, fermented chilli, served with lemon and a bowl of soft, herb-flecked white polenta.

At lunch, charred octopus with a zingy corn and fermented radish salad ($31) is bright and fresh. At dinner, a mighty bowl of diamond shell clams tossed with the shreddy meat and cooking juices of slow-cooked pig's head ($35) combines both surf and turf in a not-quite-Asian, not-quite-sure-where-it's-from way. Whole wood-roasted flathead with celeriac, hazelnuts, tomato, lemon and capers is tempting, but paying $55 for it is not.

There's a solid, 35-strong, natural-leaning wine list with some pleasant if unremarkable players like the 2013 Vinea Marson Nebbiolo from Heathcote ($75).

Desserts don't seem to be a strong point, although there's good ice-cream on a tricksy play on sticky date pud ($16), chockers with cumquats from the over-grown kitchen garden and teamed with chocolate ganache, brownie crumbs, honeycomb and sea lettuce sherbet.

Plenty of places do high-powered, high-tech, high-detail food we greatly admire.

What the Ducks do is cook with the end game in mind: eating. Theirs is likeable, messy, low-intervention food that clearly benefits from the clean, direct nature of cooking over wood and charcoal. It's closer to home-cooking, but not so much that we'd actually stay home and cook instead. Way too stressful.

Terry Durack is chief restaurant critic for The Sydney Morning Herald and senior reviewer for the Good Food Guide. This rating is based on the Good Food Guide scoring system.

THE LOWDOWN

Best bit: The no-attitude attitude

Worst bit: Gets a bit nippy at night