Occasionally food offers the chance for a new revelation. As if you’re sitting in a darkened room with a spotlight on the dish, it has all of your attention.

It is dish four in LuMi Dining’s Italy-meets-Japan tasting menu – pappardelle with braised duck, silverbeet and hazelnuts. The pasta is like sheets of silk, the duck rich with an achingly devilish depth you’d happily sell your soul for.

Magnificent sure, but the dish is vanquished in just a few mouthfuls. The moment equally satisfies and frustrates me. It’s not the size of the dish, it’s the tease of a 15-minute gap waiting for the next. It’s like playing catch and kiss, when you’d happily jump into bed with a whole damn bowl face first and be done with it. Perhaps not on a first date.

My point is, go to LuMi Dining and loosen your belt because chef Federico Zanellato is a damn fine cook. Housed in a nondescript box on Pyrmont’s Wharf 10, the room is dotted with emerald booths, black and tan bucket chairs and smart pendant lights, but honestly it’s all about the floor-to-ceiling glass doors that bring the blue ripples outside in.

Zanellato’s Italian-Japanese approach is not as scary as it sounds. One person’s soba is another’s spaghettini.

It starts with his take on gunkan (sushi). Sea urchin tops stracciatella (instead of rice) and toasted brioche. Then Jerusalem artichoke crisps look like rising flames as they jut from raw veal. A delicate spin on minestrone manifests as a medley of vegetables wading in a clear vegetable miso. Yep, miso-strone folks. Then kosho (zest of yuzu, chilli, garlic) adds a citrus, spicy edge to gelatinous slow-cooked lamb.

With sommelier Michela Zanellato offering sage advice on her adventurous wine list and a swagger to the service, LuMi is making a claim for those at the pointy end of dining to shove over and make room for a new dawn.