Felt

Score: 13/20

SALT. Banc. Vault. Dish. Pomme. Luxe. There was a stage back there in the late '90s when you simply didn't open a restaurant without a title that was an unpredictable, slightly emphatic single word comprising, preferably, a solitary syllable. If it was spelt in lower case, so much the better.

At the start of the trend, there were some goodies, especially in Sydney from whence this trend filtered (originating, of course, offshore). Some even survived and thrived, bucking the trend: think Pier and est. in Sydney, ezard, Pearl and Verge here.

Before you could say "hey pesto", lower-case monosyllabic restaurants were all over the place like a rash. The barometer of style had already started to chill on the idea and the inevitable decline from "perfect" to "passe" had begun, a one-way street. Into this environment, but almost certainly at the tail-end of the movement, came felt at the Lindrum: lower-case, monosyllabic, odd and unpredictable (unless you made the Lindrum-billiards table connection) and, in terms of branding, a couple of years too late.

That's not why I ignored it. The hotel, I'm assured by those who have used it, is terrific and the look of the place remains undeniably fine, a smashing modernisation of a period building.

A cool hotel deserved a cool restaurant. Sadly, restaurants run by hotels rarely are. The anecdotal reports were limp, suggesting high chef turnover and erratic opening hours.

felt - for that is how it remains on the hotel's rather gushing website, defiantly shunning the upper-case "F" - has a new chef. This is news on a par with a parliamentary minister announcing an internal review. But a look at the menu of said chef, Briton Sharon Robinson, suggests felt is, like the man whose name inspired the hotel's title, stretching itself to play a killer shot.

It was time for a maiden voyage. From previous visual inspections, not a lot has changed in the dining room since a 1999 launch and it is ageing gracefully. The room is slightly elevated and to one side of the narrow building; along with huge floor-to-ceiling windows looking out to the rail yards, you get superb, broad, recycled timber flooring, a mix of bistro-style seating and a plush, thickly padded leather banquette, vast ceilings and glimpses of the hotel's foyer, bar and billiards room. It's a nice place to be.

Tables are set with tea-lights, olive oil, sea salt and other decent bits and pieces. A bit of French chill-out fills out the background.

The bread's so-so, the waiters helpful, the wine list interesting - if littered with typos and spelling errors - and then there's that menu to contemplate. It would be so easy for a place like this to take the path of least resistance with a menu jammed with greatest hits, safe favourites.

I commend felt, and the chef, for taking risks with a contemporary approach that puts little on the list you're likely to have seen or tried before. The crockery and presentation of the food strives for visual attention. Unfortunately, not all of it works as well as it might; some of this food is good, some overly ambitious. And a few things embrace a richness and weight that seem out of step with the times.

"Jerusalem artichoke soup, comte cheese and chorizo samosa" ($16) is perhaps the best thing tried: a frothed and particularly creamy liquid (which could have used more vegetable flavour) with a mound of mashed Jerusalem artichoke at the centre, it arrives with a thin, cheesy baton of pastry set across the modern bowl and a separate fried pastry - the samosa - filled with the very fine combination of one of the world's great cheeses with one of the world's great sausages. But such is the creaminess that a half serve borders on the limit, even at this stage of the meal.

"Crumbed veal sweetbreads with parmesan gnocchi, rocket leaves and anchovy" ($18) is a curious name for a dish with two rocket leaves, little evidence of anchovy and thick wad of rich, cooked mushroom beneath five golden, crumbed bits of offal. What if you don't eat mushroom? There's a pale, creamy sauce (the anchovy?) and three artfully placed discs of the gnocchi, pan-fried. It's OK.

Better is the confit onion and duck pudding, a generous filling of shredded meat inside a proper timbale of suet pastry sitting erect on a smart plate. It's crowned with a crumbed, soft-fried egg yolk ("crispy hen's egg") - quite clever - with a moat of "sauce ratatouille" and a radial display of canoe-shaped pieces of turned zucchini ($17.) It all works pretty well.

But with the mains the wheels fall of the cart a bit.

Two superb lamb cutlets - thick, tanned, yet perfectly pink inside - come with a bed of baby spinach and a clear, reddish sauce flavoured with tarragon. This all works.

There are marbles of fried potato set strategically around the plate and, interspersed between them, knobs of tepid "confit lamb breast", which smells and tastes as if it has been poached and set to cool in its own fat. Another piece - again, crumbed and fried - rests on top of it all ($34). It doesn't work.

Slow-braised pig's cheeks have fewer redeeming qualities: it's a gussied-up presentation of pig as suckling piglet, the porcine equivalent of mutton dressed as lamb. The four small bits of meat themselves don't taste great, and that's before they're slathered in a firm, baked celeriac mousse, each with three capsicum stripes: red, yellow and green. There's a bed of spinach, a black olive and diced celeriac jus and wafers of crackling laid between each cheek ($32).

They look like four Telly Tubbies on a green bobsled. And they come with a version of pommes mousseline that would make Joel Robuchon, its creator, blush at the quantity of butter. After several scoops of potato, a yellow slick of molten butter that would challenge the Exxon Valdez for oil spill has taken over the spud. People don't eat like this any more, do they?

An old-fashioned steamed orange pudding ($14 and, believe me, this was the lightest thing on the dessert menu) is good, if a little heavy; it comes with candied citrus peels, a frothy pistachio Anglaise in the bowl's bottom and a mitre board of white chocolate with Pollock-esque splatterings of green across its surface. As a winter dessert, it's very acceptable.

It was a meal that made the narrow stairway between Flinders Street and Flinders Lane something of a challenge, and that was only on a pre-dinner drink and a shared bottle of pinot. There are glimpses of real style and adventure here, but being ambitious and hitting the target are two separate things.

The simpler, less modern-sounding dishes may well be superb.

Score: 19: Unacceptable. 10-11: Just OK, some shortcomings. 12: Fair. 13:Getting there. 14: Recommended. 15: Good. 16: Really good. 17: Truly excellent. 18: Outstanding. 19-20: Approaching perfection, Victoria's best.