Locale is moody, with black interiors and hip clusters of flowers on the bar. The menu is smart Italian that promises a lot and delivers a lot. The food is of a uniformly high standard. The Fraser Island spanner crab risotto ($29) with lemon and sea urchin butter, is enlivened with a sprinkling of delicately salted bottarga, a cured fish roe.

Also on the menu are the free-range Gympie pork belly and Darling Downs Black Angus as well as the Coral Coast barramundi which is laced with a parsley puree and sits upon a pool of smoked tomato gel and almond “milk”. It comes adorned with a zucchini flower stuffed with a scallop mousseline. The fazzoletti “handkerchief” pasta, blackened with squid ink, resembles a seaweed-seafood medley.

It’s hard to make these kind of dishes look elegant on the plate. However, the Locale kitchen presents an attractive assembly. And it is clever cooking with an abundance of flavours from the Mooloolaba king prawns, the crab, the mussels and the calamari singing in harmony with a rich garlic butter and lemon sauce with a pistachio crunch.

There is an air of calm professionalism throughout the busy restaurant and the long and delightfully idiosyncratic wine list featured Italian, Australian and New Zealand (and some French) treasures. It was replete with helpful tasting notes. There is much to admire here. In a frequently overrated resort town where many restaurants lack that flash of culinary genius, Locale succeeds.

Must-eat dish: Fraser Island spanner crab risotto