The River

The River caused quite a sensation when it opened in 2007, serving modern, locally sourced, sophisticated food in a breezy, refitted cottage on the banks of the Moruya River.

The charm was threefold. First, the building - a beautifully redesigned and extended cottage that makes you feel as if you are part of the gleaming river frontage - courtesy of architect and first owner Stuart Whitelaw.

Second, the food was the stuff of seaside fantasy: seafood soups with the sweet heady taste of the ocean, herbs and salads from the kitchen garden, and other produce drawn from the local area.

Third, the enthusiasm of the staff was infectious. There is nothing quite like a place where all involved clearly love what they do.

The awards and hats tumbled in, as did the customers, so the challenge for the River has been to keep it up - to not remain static, but stay true to those impressive first days, and to simply stay open.

In a town where the summer season is frantic, but the rest of the year is very quiet, many good chefs and restaurateurs have arrived with big plans, only to go back to the city with big debts a few years later.

The River is a wonderful place for a special dinner or lunch, showing diners all that is gorgeous about the south coast.

Current chef and owner Peter Compton, however, is a sticker, and has settled into the chair nicely, with a bent for clean, seasonal but sophisticated dishes. He has made the River a place that people will want to travel to, but one that the locals also patronise.

The River is no transplanted city eatery, although the chef has clearly leant much on his travels. It is part of the place it inhabits, with a close feeling for the changing seasons, and a real commitment to local produce.

The menu is concise, but with plenty of genuine variety among the five options each for main and entree. If choice is beyond you, you can opt for the five-course tasting menu ($85, $115 with matching wine), which the chef sorts out daily.

This is a generous, but not absurd amount of food, and gives a lovely shape to the meal.

We take the five-course option on visits in January and last November, and a lovely little beaker of veloute starts things off with a real spark both times. This time, the silky smooth corn soup is bright in colour and taste, underlined with a hint of crab.

Propped on the side is a lovely treat - a little crab beignet (crab fritter), crisp on the outside and soft and crabby inside.

Matching wines are carefully considered, with a good French champagne working well with the veloute.

The wine list, like the menu, is brief (three sparkling, 12 white, 13 red, 13 by the glass), but with good internal variety and quality from interesting growers at home and abroad.

Locals feature heavily, with Long Range Gully (which also does wine dinners) and Mount Majura alongside offerings from Spain and France.

The staff are friendly and attentive and, importantly, able to make recommendations. When they aren't sure, they ask the chef, with good results.

A dish of beautifully cooked blue-eye cod flakes well under the fork, and is teamed with a juicy scallop, a wonderfully crisp zucchini flower stuffed with sweet pink crab, and a lovely luxurious smear of lobster bisque smear.

Provencale salad of tomato and thin cucumber adds a crunchy contrast, and is a little over-salty, but this is a tiny point. This is a beautiful and sophisticated selection of fish and seafood, perfect for the location.

A slice of pork belly shows all the pretenders how this dish should be done - perfectly crisped, in a juicy but not fatty slice, and served with silky truffled mash. Crushed hazelnuts and two deeply flavoured sauces add the final touch to a perfectly balanced dish.

The beef fillet is tender and flavoursome, enhanced by a disk of blue cheese butter melting over the top, with a lovely baton of layered potato (the classic dauphinoise), a garden-crisp salad and a beetroot puree to bring it all back to earth. Again, this is a dish showing real assurance and poise, neither doing too much or too little.

A peach and vanilla creme dessert adds the final touch to an excellent meal, with perfectly ripe slices in rich, silky vanilla creme, great hazelnut crumbs and a superb peach sorbet, blushing with substance.

The River is a wonderful place for a special dinner or lunch, showing diners all that is gorgeous about the south coast.

Compton has taken all the early promise and success, and added consistency and continuing vibrancy, which means that it will long remain a place well worth visiting in winter as well as summer.