Duck Duck Goose

TRYING out a new restaurant is a roll of the dice, so a little due diligence can go a long way. When an online reconnaissance mission throws up names such as "gastronomic salad of the sea", along with proclamations about pioneering a new wave of French cooking, it's enough to make you crawl back into bed instead of finding the car keys. But forewarned is forearmed, and Duck Duck Goose isn't as scary as its web introduction suggests. It turns out to be a sheep in wolf's clothing, in fact — a promising, mostly French restaurant that turns out mostly good food and confuses people because of the contiguity between the restaurant and the yum cha operation next door, both operated under the DDG name by the Sydney-based outfit Kam Fook.

Call to book and you'll be asked whether you're after the dark side or the light side. No denying these people have a well-developed sense of the dramatic. The light side, the yin to the yang, has an all-day pan-Asian thing going on in a smart blonde space with a significant nod to Scandinavian style.

Going away from the light — enter through the glossy arched portal fronting the QV's Artemis Lane for maximum thrill factor — and it transpires that the restaurant's niche is people in search of the special night out. Diners who want to be cosseted and feel important and have their wine glasses refilled every 2.5 sips, which is possibly the legal difference between waiting and stalking. If I'd ever been to Hong Kong I would probably assert that it's like some moody, big-money, splashy Kowloon restaurant. The website does, if not in those exact words.

The menu, created by consultant chef Haru Inukai of Sydney bistro Blancharu, occasionally reads like the radical fringe of molecular gastronomy meeting Franco-Nippon fusion, but the totems of French and Japanese cuisine don't so much collide as form an apartheid system wherein the latter is put into servitude. Like all good servants (or so I'm told) they — the yuzu, the miso, the pickled this-and-that – do their job unobtrusively.

The still-or-sparkling negotiations completed, the meal begins with a soothing flourish of Frenchness – good, warm, house-baked baguettes served with good, imported French butter. The amuse bouche arrives, a tiny sweet brioche hamburger bun sandwiched around foie gras and peach jam. Any suspicions about being lulled into a false sense of security are dispatched with the gastronomic salad of the sea ($28): it turns out the only thing unpalatable about this little assembly is the name. Smoked scallops, austere white slices of abalone, tataki-style tuna, fat chunks of prawn and marinated octopus tentacles play off against the earthy sweetness of three colourful swipes (carrot, saffron and beetroot); all that genteel politeness is leavened by the salty flashes of salmon roe, ponzu jelly, black olive tapenade and bottarga. A real surprise, and because it's so pretty I'll let them get away with calling it a salad.

Despite a slightly too heavy vanilla accent in the parsnip puree, an entree of quail ($23) also has plenty to recommend it: a rolled leg and a breast seared with five-spice to that perfect charry pinkness, the puree balanced to a large extent by the dried mushroom funk of a pan-fried wedge of porcini risotto.

It's the crash-or-crash-through dishes that are the least successful, but that's the risk you take when pioneering a new wave of French cooking. John Dory fillet ($39) lined with Szechuan paste and a light, inconsequential scallop mousse, then wrapped in a shredded forest of kaitifi pastry and topped with a scattering of grated parmesan and snipped chives — the purpose of that one is lost before it even gets to translation.

Other translations might err towards the grandiose but the fundamentals are sound. A "mille feuille" of braised oxtail and foie gras ($48) is more of a brik pastry spring roll, but it's nonetheless a fully realised dish, the almost obscene richness wickedly balanced with a "yuzu-porto" sauce, the citrus giving just a touch of sharpness to the jammy port-based sauce doled out by a hand attuned to its power.

Like many restaurants in the early days of life, DDG struggles a bit for personality. The thump of weights hitting the floor in the gym above adds a foreboding element to the French music. A gently rippling raised pool above which hangs pendulous bamboo lights lends energy — part zen, part Scarface — to the quiet, carpeted room with its black marble table-tops, while the wine library secured inside a glass wall is softly lit and hallowed, like a religious visitation that you really, really want to drink.

The wine list is intelligent; Antipodean and French, mostly — the hero Bordeaux is there in numbers, but it doesn't forget about people who don't have three or four figures to splash. Aside from the assiduous top-ups, the service mostly has its old-school charms in order.

Like the savoury courses, the desserts are classic rather than confrontational. Blanc manger ($19) — France's answer to the panna cotta — in a lilypond bowl with strawberry granita and mascerated strawberries suffers some interloping star anise-poached lentils, but — voila! — they've been enlisted to disguise the popping candy. It's easy to fall for its sweet charms, as it is for the opera's ($19) — a multi-textural deconstructed chocolate, coffee and hazelnut thing with a languid curl of tempered chocolate and a grown-up strip of cassis jelly.

There's a lot riding on Duck Duck Goose after a troubled two-year gestation that saw it on again, off again seemingly ad infinitum, to the ongoing entertainment of the Espresso column. Now the eagle has landed, I'll admit to some surprise it's going to rustle fewer feathers than anticipated. Certainly not mine. It just goes to show you can't believe everything you read.

Score 14/20