A whole new innings at The Milan Cricket Club

"Well this is a silly idea," says my lunch guest, looking around. "So silly, it might just work."

Me, I don't see what's so silly about a British/Italian mash-up in which British pub food and Italian steaks are brought to you by elegant gentlemen in tailored tartan face masks. At this stage of the game, it seems perfectly sensible.

Nino Zoccali has pivoted his Strand Arcade baby, La Rosa, into a pop-up with guest chef Nicholas Hill, last seen doing scotch eggs at The Old Fitz in Woolloomooloo.

Zoccali attempts to justify it by pointing out that some of Italy's biggest sporting clubs were set up by British expats in the 19th century. Nice try, but the real story is that he wanted to do something different and fun, and so did Hill.

At The Old Fitz, Hill gained a cultish following for his ability to bring back the dead: recreating classic Escoffier dishes with wit and precision, to be eaten in the bar with a beer.

Here, the grilled beef tongue with anchovy, whole flounder with green sauce, and sides of Yorkshire pudding have his name all over them.

Raw beef and dripping toast ($26) is steak tartare by way of granny; the hand-chopped Cape Grim topside brightly flavoured with chives and horseradish, and spread over toast smothered with beef dripping. (Your nan probably grew up with beef dripping on toast – and wouldn't she love to hear you were paying $26 for it?)

Then there's the Pig Mack ($29), a crumbed schnitzel made from all the bits and bobs of a boned pig's head, slipped inside a soft potato bun (Martin's, the same roll used by America's Shake Shack burger chain) along with shredded lettuce, mustard mayo and house-made dill pickles. I'm torn.

The schnitzel is great – crunchy and squishy in all the good ways – but it deserves more than being a cool-kid's burger. I get the joke; I just don't think the schnitzel does.

A lone gentleman at the next table orders a scotch egg ($12) and calmly eats his way through the rolled oat and panko crumb crust, the porky filling and the soft-set yolk. "My wife sent me," he explains. "I'm the guinea pig."

The Florentine T-Bone Selection lists various beef, pork, veal and lamb steaks (the lamb is a Suffolk lamb double chop, known as a Barnsley), and seems obligatory. My Rose Mallee British breed T-bone ($65) is free-range and grain-fed, supplied by Western Australia's legendary Vince Garreffa, Zoccali's godfather and founder of Mondo Meats and White Rocks veal.

Cooked medium-rare, the meat is sliced and looks a bit scrappy, but there's real flavour on the plate. It comes with a crusty, nuggety Yorkshire pud and a marrow bone filled with horseradish cream.

It also comes with manager Stefano Zanco, bearing a box of various condiments, among which proudly sits a bottle of HP Sauce, ho ho.

It's not all pig's heads and beef bones, however. There's a startlingly beautiful dish of spring vegetables ($18), a snappy collection of cucumber, crimson onions, broad beans, tiny zucchini flowers, radishes and sugar snaps in a sharp vinaigrette of bay leaf vinegar and Pendolino Dolce extra virgin olive oil.

Dismount with a scoop of marmalade ice-cream ($16) on caramelised sourdough doused in butterscotch sauce, and it really does feel like you're eating marmalade on toast.

The darkly glamorous dining room is luxuriously comfortable, and service levels are courageously high. Yes, it probably is a bit silly, and the British pub side of the menu is more fun than the Milanese steakhouse.

But there will always be members ready to sign up to a club run by Nino Zoccali, with Nik Hill in the kitchen. And perhaps even more, for a pub.

The low-down

The Milan Cricket Club

Address Shop 133, Level 2 The Strand Arcade, 193 Pitt Street, Sydney, 02 9223 1674, larosathestrand.com.au

Open Lunch Fri-Sat; dinner Thu-Sat

Dining window 90 minutes

Vegetarian One entree, one main

Drinks A charming Archie Rose gin trolley, British and Italian beers, and Australian and Italian varietals.

Cost About $150 for two, plus drinks

Score Scoring is paused while the industry gets back on its feet.