Is this alteration a winning move?

There's a lot to be said for rolling the dice, shaking things up and starting again. Look at Madonna, reigning queen of flipping and reversing it and coming out on top (as long as you don't count any of the times she tried to be an actor). I wonder if the Commune Group could take some notes from Madge.

It was only last September that the hospitality juggernaut behind Hanoi Hannah, Tokyo Tina and Neptune Wine Bar announced they were turning their Vietnamese fun house Saigon Sally into Thai-inflected diner BKK. Within six months they were talking of taking that concept upmarket due a flood of similar offerings in the area. Next we heard they were ditching BKK totally for Alter, a casual fine diner with a contemporary Australian menu.

Restaurant do-overs don't carry the same stigma they used to. They are just a reality of operating in a fickle market. Sometimes, it's super smart. The freshening up of Cutler & Co. last year made it one of 2017's greatest hits. Alter, unfortunately, reads more like that time Kylie tried to go indie on a whim. 

I don't make this criticism lightly. Restaurants cost a lot of money and not just for the people eating in them. So I'm going to say some nice things about Alter. Nic Coulter, one of the owners, is on the floor and he is always a consummate host. The new menu has a cocktail list of six drinks designed to consume before, with and after food. The martini, made with a splash of sherry and garnished with a pickled cherry tomato, is like a very savoury gibson. I like it. Ditto the wine list featuring some trendy Australian producers of aromatic wines.

I also quite like the tweaks to the design of the room, which have made it into a more mature, moody space. The dominant central bar has been stained dark, with high-backed bar stools offering spinal support. Linen cloth hangings soften the formerly hard edges. A geometric mural creeping over a wall and onto the ceiling has a Keith Haring vibe.

Doing the set menu would also represent a very good deal at $65 if the dishes were executed well. I can't say that all of them are. Chef Sean Judd has a reputation for his Thai cooking. His former posts include Chin Chin, Longrain and at one point, London's Nahm. The modern Australian brief here does allow some of those dishes to live: a northern Thai-style sausage fragrant with kaffir lime and served with a burnt eggplant relish is a juicy good time and shows his strengths in full. The rest of the menu reads haphazardly – like the uni essay you've rushed to finish for a subject you don't really like.

Our amuse is a baby carrot braised in dashi, painted with yoghurt and showered with bonito. It is tangy, rooty and fishy at once and probably not a great new discovery in the flavour venn diagram.

Whipped cod roe dip is silky and lemony, and its garnish of shiny orange fish roe and crumbled chicken crackling very on-trend. But the roti with it is so chewy it squeaks and requires proper elbow grease to rip. Better, if a little shouty flavour-wise, a deboned, soy-marinated and plum-glazed half quail cooked to pinkness on the hibachi grill and served with a little Sichuan pepper for dipping.

Curry egg noodles with pickled mustard greens and sea urchin roe works surprisingly well as a flavour combo, the rich custard-of-the-sea melding with nutty and spicy elements in the sauce, but the noodles, more like pappardelle than anything Asian, are so firm they lift as a whole clump from the bowl.

On the flip side, the hand-rolled noodles bedded under duck leg in a sweet soy-stained masterstock are stubby and limp, yielding to paste on impact. Brussels sprouts on the side, fried with lardons and chilli jam, are so intensely salty we leave them.

Finally comes the pineapple tarte tatin, thin sheets of caramelised pineapple on a flaky pastry base ringed with caramel on the plate. It's fine. Nice actually. But fine dining?

I feel for Judd. This doesn't read like his food. I wonder how much control he had over this new direction he's been tasked with carrying out? And while I appreciate the bravery of the Commune Group to go back to the drawing board, it feels like Alter still needs some alterations to hum.