Barangaroo keeps coming up with restaurant hits, and Banksii’s vermouth bar promises to be hot this summer

Address: Shop 11, 33 Barangaroo Ave, Barangaroo

Phone: 8072 7037

Web: banksii.sydney

Food: Contemporary

Score: 15.5/20

Sometimes, things that look improbable on paper turn out to be quite all right on the night.

You might, for instance, look at Hamish Ingham and Rebecca Lines’ new Banksii and think, well, that’s rather a lot of concepts to shove into one pigeonhole there.

For starters, Lines has decided Banksii will be a vermouth bar. “A what bar?” seems to be the response by most people to that concept. (Perhaps it might have sounded cooler if she had labelled it a Cinzano bar. That does have quite a nice ring to it.)

Then there is the fact that it is a venue that will open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. That it seats a huge 204. That it’s at Barangaroo, and is substantially outdoors.

The cuisine, meanwhile, is contemporary Australian, meaning sort of modern food — salads, deconstructed protein dishes, seafood, shared plates — with a “botanical feel”. A botanical feel? What even is that? (Turns out it means lots of fresh herbs and spices). On top of that, chef Ingham has grafted onto all of that his appreciation of native Australian ingredients. A lot going on? Yes.

Yet, to sit in this elegant white-hued dining space and start with a cheeky house rosé vermouth ($5) while munching on a group of snacks that include fat, silky Sydney rock oysters bathing in white vermouth and sprinkled with lantana flowers ($5 each), salty handmade chips and green olives ($12), is quite the pleasant thing. Hmm, you might think, perhaps this will work after all.

Banksii is a sister restaurant for Ingham and Lines’ Surry Hills venue, Bar H, only bigger and more ambitious. Bold and fresh, it seems a good stage for the talents of these keen restaurateurs, with a lot of bang in the eating.

The menu is divided into two neat sections — small plates and large plates — so determine your order on your level of hunger. Start, though, with some of the health-giving options: a positively medicinal selection of raw baby root vegetables ($16) — turnips, heirloom carrots, cucumber — offered with a sesame seed-topped yoghurt, or a wonderful, spring-fresh salad of broadbeans and just-podded peas ($19), with a mound of Meredith goat’s curd showered with tart aged goat’s cheese. It’s your week’s worth of greens in one go.

Vegetable dishes feature heavily here, for there’s a version of the Ancient Greek wild weed pie — here called “botanical greens and cheese pie” ($27), and a take on Caesar salad ($21) with iceberg, pecorino, bacon and anchovy. In other words, classics given a 21st century push.

Outstanding are prawns ($24) cooked in butter with mustard seed, and for contemporary elements, pickled slices of turmeric and fried curry leaf. The huge flavours are handled lip-smackingly well.

Good, too, if requiring elbow grease, are mussels ($28) cooked in vermouth and nettle butter with green olives, and there's a cracking version of glazed duck ($42), made interesting via native plums soaked in red vermouth that zing in the mouth like tart lemonade.

Throughout, Ingham’s cooking is sharp and contained, his approach to refreshing oft-seen dishes inventive. Best is that his plates aren’t overly contrived, presentation -wise, while his flavours are fearless.

Raise a glass of vermouth to that.

twitter: @lizziemeryment