Sage, Braddon

Sage has a strikingly lovely set up at Gorman House and, while you'd have to say fine dining is not where things are at, Sage manages to keep things cosy and bright enough; while it is certainly fine dining in approach, it avoids stuffiness.

There is, nevertheless, a sense of occasion about dining at Sage, in the walk through the pretty greenery, the historic building and the formality in service and tableware. You come here to celebrate something.

In the end, though, I'm pleased we aren't marking a special event tonight, because there is a certain perfunctoriness, or perhaps inflexibility, in the service that has left us feeling misunderstood, or generic. It's as if we are put through a kind of formulaic evening rather than a special evening.

Sage offers a set menu: three courses for $75, with a choice of four dishes in each course. You can also order "five surprise courses" for $95, but I'm not sure "surprise" is a word meant for restaurant menus.

It's lovely to start with Sage's own cultured butter, a light whipped butter with a mushroomy flavour and black volcanic salt from Cyprus on warm sourdough. And we're offered a pretty amuse bouche, a tiny soft little carrot nest with celeriac and tomato puree.

We don't feel highly inspired by the wines offered by the glass. It's much better to open a couple of interesting wines each night than try to cover the bases with safe choices. And, to our mind, the wine list is a little odd in the local selections, some good and some well-known local wines, but not the very best nor the most interesting.

There's Nick O'Leary riesling and pinot, Lerida pinot, Quarry Hill tempranillo, Collector Marked Tree shiraz, Four Winds shiraz, Long Rail Gully cabernet sauvignon and Wimbaliri 35th Parallel chardonnay.

We're a little annoyed by the failure to bring the wine bottles to the table to pour into our glasses. They're a rich, round Craggy Range "Gimlett" (presumably Gimblett) Gravels chardonnay ($13/$80) from Hawkes Bay, and a full-of-apples Italian prosecco ($14).

We might be annoyed also if we had wanted plain tap water, since the water offer is simply "still or sparkling", at $6 a head either way. But because we want sparkling and plenty of it, it's fine for us tonight.

And we're immediately happy and very impressed when the entrees arrive.

"Beetroot, bearnaise, goat's curd mousse" is a dish of little yellow and red beetroots, beautifully cooked, with a rich, thick beetroot cream, goat's curd and a blasted powder, which I think is goat's cheese also. There's a gentle citrus flavour and a hazelnut crunch. In all, it's mouth filling and delicious.

The squid ink risotto is better yet. The menu description is a little alarming, promising harissa, honey, sesame and coriander, but there's no overt taste of these ingredients in what is a simple dish, which, like the beetroot, is intense. The flavours are chilli heat, garlic and salt with the squid and super sticky risotto that is balanced well. The quality and concentration of these entrees has put us in good spirits.

Of the four mains, there's a risotto, unfortunately without the truffles tonight, a kingfish and two red meats, rolled lamb and beef cheek, which is where we head. The rolled lamb is good and we're always won over by this style of serving lamb: the fatty succulent meat is shredded, squashed together into a log, then fried for a crisp coasting on the outside. Hard to resist. We're not thrilled, though, to see the powder technique appear again on this plate, as it did with the beetroot, this time turning, I think, olives into powder. This is a technique about texture, but to my mind it dilutes flavours, which serves a purpose at times, but not in too many dishes and not for its own sake.

The beef cheek has all the dark intensity that you love in this cut, and here it is so rich, it's like eating butter, something you can only do in small quantities. It's served with little pencils of celeriac and great fried sage leaves.

The roast brussels sprouts with bacon and coriander that we order as a side ($10) are overplayed. They're charred and crisped to within an inch of their life and quite oily, so they no longer resemble an actual vegetable. I get that brussels lend themselves to this kind of meaty treatment, but here we've lost the essence of brussels, with no sign also of the promised coriander.

We were treated, surprisingly, to a pre-dessert tonight, which includes an excellent, pure berry sorbet, and white-chocolate mousse, never a favourite with me.

In actual desserts, the rhubarb is good, as is the mound of custard. Your feelings about the honey madeleine will probably come down to whether you enjoy the sheer dominating strength of manuka honey.

The chocolate "couscous" turns out to refer to turning chocolate into a powder, a technique that by now we've had enough of. There just seems no reason to do this to the centrepiece of a dessert. The espresso ice-cream is pure and strong, tasting precisely of coffee, and the meringue is enjoyable but it's not an entirely successful dessert.

So we leave the sparkling lights and bright colours of this beautiful spot with mixed feelings, having been very happy with some aspects of our meal, and less happy with others. We're told the Harrington brothers, of the highly successful Akiba, are now in the midst of taking back hands-on control of Sage and rebuilding it carefully, which might explain the less-than-settled feeling tonight.