Some things just don’t come easily. I have heard of restaurants springing up more or less overnight, the force of creativity run riot. And then there’s 1821, a venue that has taken more than two years to realise.

It seems inconceivable that anyone has that amount of time (or money) to spend on a restaurant, but such has been the perseverance of publican and restaurateur Jim Kospetas. Kospetas is a big identity in Sydney’s Greek community and 1821 — the year of a Greek revolt against the Ottoman Empire — is his slice of the islands in Sydney. He has fought council delays, lease issues and red tape to open the venue that luxuriates in an amazing white fitout, created by Greek designer Dimitris Economou, shipped from Athens.

And to sit in this room, with its soaring ceiling, heritage colonnades and carefully concealed lighting, is to marvel at what you can get for a lot of money. In a way it’s a very charming room, counterintuitive to current Sydney dining trends that prefer dark, small, edgy spaces with high noise ratio, crammed tables and throwaway paper menus.

In the kitchen is another Sydney Greek hero in chef David Tsirekas (ex-Xanthi, Perama), whose food will be recognisable to anyone who has dined at either of his previous venues. For most this will be a good thing, even if, at 1821 Tsirekas promises food that’s a step up — classic dishes with, as he puts it, “the rustic taken out of them”. For all that, the menu opens with a sequence of recognisable dishes — dips, say, including tarama ($14) and melitzana ($14), olives ($14) and even “yiayia’s hand cut chips” ($14), a sentimental ode to Greek milk bars of old, with the chips covered with crumbled feta, oregano and a fried egg. Cute.

Then there’s a village salad ($15) that’s a Greek salad, really, or a more jazzy “Greekslaw” ($14), of red cabbage, parsley and toasted hazelnuts (that could use more sharpness and more mayo) before the menu hits top gear.

Every Greek chef has his signature dish and for Tsirekas, it’s pork belly baklava ($28); an entree of slow-cooked meat layered mille-feuille style between filo pastry on a bed of prune paste and topped with crosses of crackling. Hello, old friend.

Great, too, is an enormously hearty rendition of a wild weed pie ($27), with filo pastry stuffed with greens — chicory, amaranth, spinach and endive, plus leek and jasmine rice. You could eat this on its own for lunch and be enormously satisfied.

That’s the good. Perhaps less satisfactory are some of the seafood dishes — ouzo-cured salmon ($27) that needs more salt and to lose the garden of flowers scattered over it, and that wonderful seafood, cheese and pasta dish of saganaki ($38) that here is gluggy and heavy-handed.

Some other dishes too could use editing. “Aphrodite’s garden” ($16), a dessert of deconstructed walnut cake, more flowers and sheep’s milk panna cotta, say, looks like it’s trying hard to be cool. I’m also unconvinced by the need to take the rustic out of the food. This is an era when diners yearn for clever casual (read rustic); fancy for fancy’s sake offers less than that which has the warm hand of authenticity about it. Rustic is good, chef. Go with rustic. Lighten up.

Still to open is a basement bar so flashy it looks like it has arrived from Kings Cross in the 70s. Another money spend. Has, I wonder, the huge investment been worth it? I very much hope so. It would be Greek tragedy otherwise.

This review originally appeared on dailytelegraph.com.au.