More than a pretty view: Why this waterfront restaurant is the triple threat of sun, sea and seafood

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On a sunny day, The Basin Dining Room opens its glass doors to the balcony, the breeze and the beach. It’s pretty magic. But a lot of seaside restaurants fall into automatic cruise mode because the setting does all the work for them. Would we still go if they relocated to an industrial estate?

It was all about the location for Doug and Kylie Fraser of the popular Restaurant Lovat in Newport. Doug is a chef of considerable credentials (Aria, and Restaurant Gordon Ramsay and Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons in the UK) and Kylie the restaurateur.

Just two years ago they were swimming in Bongin Bongin Bay, aka Mona Vale Basin, keeping an eye on the ongoing $10 million revamp of the Surf Life Saving Club and thinking “what a great spot for a seafood restaurant”. The Basin Dining Room was born.

There’s an understated Scandinavian style to the large square room on the first floor, contrasting with big, cushy booths in front of the bustling kitchen to the rear. Soft white, oversized pendant lights float lazily over a long central share table like giant manta rays, and stools line the balcony terrace facing the sea.

The menu is hard to pin down, but you’ll find what you want on it, and I think that’s the point. It’s not all full-on seafood platters ($145) for when you’re out with the girls doing Yuzu Cosmos. There’s also beer-battered flathead with chunky chips and tartare ($35) for Uncle Brian, and lightly smoked salmon salads with fennel and citrus, with a vague undercurrent of Japanese seasonings adding nuance.

Ordering is a bit like fishing – you never know what size you’re going to get. Wagyu skewers with a Korean marinade are small ($13 each). So is a first course of scallop and prawn ravioli on an overly sweet corn puree ($29).

Then along sails a rather large cruise liner of a seafood pie ($36), with fish, mussels, scallops and peas in a creamy sauce under filo pastry. A caesar salad on the side acts like a dinghy, ferrying greens, soft egg and parmesan to the big ship. (Not sure why, seems generous to a fault.)

A battered slipper lobster (Moreton Bay bug) in a brioche roll ($18) is remarkable for its lack of flavour.

The best order so far has been whippy taramasalata with baby pita bread, good value at $12, and barbecue baby sole coated with a caper and dill butter ($48). Dry-aged for two days, it’s cooked on a lava rock grill just to the point where you can pull the flesh from the bone; in other words, beautifully.

Because sole isn’t always available, I’ve awarded go-to dish to a runner-up of big, fat, nicely cooked mussels in a bathtub’s worth of tomato and 𝄒nduja butter sauce. Thick slices of soft fluffy bread are popped in there for mopping-up with. (Anyone else prefer them to be toasted? No? Just me?)

Twists of casarecce ($37) loll about in another tubful of good flavoursome tomato-based sauce studded with small curls of prawns.

It’s a well-run restaurant, and special shout-out to Sarka Frycarova and Sakib Siddiqui cruising the floor; always keeping an eye on things. A request for a glass of complex, citrusy Clarence House Estate Chardonnay from Tasmania ($18/$78) is fulfilled in the time it takes to walk to the bar and return. That’s rare.

There are more dessert options (eight!) than I have seen for a while, and an individual, paper-wrapped Basque cheesecake has a sweet charm, with a pot of blood orange saffron marmalade for cut-through.

Generally speaking, a menu that runs from fried calamari to foie gras tartlets, and slipper lobster rolls to grain-fed scotch fillet could suggest a certain lack of focus. Wrong. They know exactly what they’re doing, which is giving people what they want. And they do it professionally, hospitably, and without any snobbery. Which means, of course, that the place will work just as well when the sun isn’t shining.