Cottage Point Inn still a perfect perch for the fly-in crowd

The special of the day at Cottage Point Inn is, would you believe, raw, unmarinated steak. It's not even wagyu – and it's literally thrown at you from a plastic container. This is all perfectly acceptable if you happen to be a kookaburra.

If you're not, you get to sit at a table at this idyllic getaway on the lower reaches of the Hawkesbury, watching seaplanes, sleek yachts, tinnies, kayaks and jet skis go by.

You also get to choose from the seasonally driven, French-leaning menu of newly arrived head chef Kevin Solomon, former head chef at Guillaume at Bennelong and Guillaume, Paddington. Which is also perfectly acceptable. The kookaburra feeding time is a lovely bonus.

Few boats have been rocked in the transition from talented departing chef, Guillaume Zika, now working the grills at Mrs Sippy in Bali. Of course not.

This is the sort of place where a chef slots into the restaurant systems, not the other way around. You can feel the well-worn grooves of service right from the start; everything has its order and timing, each thing its place. It's as calming and mesmerising as the blue-green river.

Even Solomon's menu has a similar structure to Zika's; the warm potato and rosemary bread is still house-baked, and smooth, whipped butter still comes perched on a rock. 

What's new? Glistening furls of clean-tasting wild kingfish teamed with cubes of delicately smoked eel and smoked eel pâté – a great combination in itself – that get a kick of freshness from crisp slices of apple and a smooth apple puree ($32).

Less cohesive is a tangle of lightly cooked "tagliatelle" of squid, guanciale (cured pig jowl), enoki mushrooms and warm persimmon, with a tomato water pour-over at the table ($34). It's a dish that needs a bit more work – the guanciale wads too easily and the juices on the plate pool into something thin and milky.

There is a good-looking dish of wagyu beef with shiitake mushrooms, sesame and ginger, but fish seems more fitting when dining a la river. A fleshy fillet of wild mulloway ($47) makes a lovely dish, the skin as crisp as bark, with a mound of greens – cabbage, green olive cheeks, garlic puree – in a pond of creamy buttermilk and garlic sauce.

Seared fillets of dusky flathead ($45) are a little overdone, topped with leafy, just-wilted winter greens, grated macadamia nuts and pink society garlic flowers in a buttery anchovy sauce.

Unexpectedly fabulous is a side of pumpkin ($11), the wedges coated in another rich creamy, umami-laden sauce, speckled with crisped kombu.

The wine list is professionally put together and fairly priced, with a fat, fresh and fragrant 2016 Circuit pinot gris from Canterbury,New Zealand, among the limited wines by the glass.

Dessert is as if from another hand; precise, restrained and single-minded, without the inescapable sauces that accompany savoury dishes. A deconstruction of gingerbread, brown sugar puffs, cardamom gel, yoghurt, gingerbread puree and crumbs gathers around a single quenelle of a lovely carrot sorbet that looks like some mad fluorescent football.

Take away the exquisite location, and Cottage Point Inn is an enjoyable, if conventional, north-shore fine diner. Put it back, and it's delightful destination dining. In other words, Cottage Point Inn is still Cottage Point Inn.

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: Well, hello – the water views, of course.

Worst bit: The sauces all look the same.