It wouldn’t be outrageous to say Hubert was the restaurant Sydney needed. A restaurant that has revived the ghosts of restaurants past to glorify the best bits that many of us may have forgotten.

We talk so much about the latest and greatest restaurant it makes us susceptible to losing touch with not only certain cuisines and dishes, but restaurant etiquette and genuine hospitality at the core of restaurants offering. Hubert is the very reason we go out to eat — good times and great food with people we love.

The first restaurant from the Swillhouse Group (Shady Pines Saloon, Baxter’s Inn, Frankie’s Pizza) spirals down two floors past the largest miniature booze collection on the planet and into a kind of post war France Bistro and tavern. It’s boisterous, rocking, fun, meaning that all are welcome to feel right at home. In the kitchen chef Dan Pepperell is using the umami oomph of Japanese ingredients to give depth to classic French bistro nosh.

A series of rooms, including two eat at bars and a dining room proper housing a baby grand piano and microphone begging for a song is decorated in mismatched period art, wooden-panelled walls with bottles, that run the entire perimeter, and slow turning ceiling fans.

Diamond shell clams land in a Normandy-style sauce. Bonito jelly is bolstered by the subtle smokiness from dashi. Inside caviar, trout roe and a set egg yolk. Large Salted Spanish Nardin anchovies arrive on buttered sourdough, while Thirlmere duck liver parfait gets a neat kick out of maple syrup jelly. Bordelaise butter melts over pretty pink strips of Rangers Valley flank.

Must eat: Chicken fricassee