The Weekly Review

The modern Aussie pub can take any form, can’t it? How about a 1950s diner decked out with found and recycled furniture and featuring a Sunday roast? There should be one in every suburb.

At Moon Under Water, it’s all about the cheesy biscuit – a gruyère de comté and parmesan shortbread that melts on the tongue and leaves you gagging for another.

From the “small and tasty” section, the duck-breast roll was a natural starting point – tender duck meat, finely sliced water chestnut, shiitake mushrooms and bright shredded carrot filled the carefully fried rice paper rolls.

The Longrain experience should always begin with cocktails – in our case, a round of stickmata, one of the original “stick drinks” (fruit crushed into booze using a wooden truncheon) conceived by Martin Boetz and Sam Christie at their pioneering Sydney warehouse restaurant in 1999.

The service at Speakeasy was excellent; our attendant was assured, swift and charming. But the food we ate just didn’t meet the high expectations created by its inspired surroundings.