It’s one of many fine, Australian-made details in the Luchetti Krelle fitout for Mode Kitchen & Bar at the Four Seasons hotel on George St.

The space has had some turnover in recent years. In 2012, Bar H and now Banksii chef Hamish Ingham opened The Woods; then Mark Best oversaw Pei Modern from 2014 until it closed early this year.

Now Francesco Mannelli, previously at Balla, Bistrode CBD and Est, has taken on head chef duties, stepping away from fine dining towards the kind of more casual and affordable menu Sydney favours these days. He pairs great seasonal produce with a snappy by-the-glass wine list (as well as a longer bottled version), and the Italian waiters are cheery and friendly, not too formal and “hand-behind-the-back”, as restaurant manager Simone Cordedda puts it.

We take a seat at a low, marble-topped table in the bar area, which has its own food menu including spanner crab sandwich, housemade wagyu bresaola and a choice of four cheeses, from Holy Goat La Luna with truffle honey to Pyengana cheddar and quince paste.

With the sudden spring heatwave, it’s hard to go past the bar’s signature G & T, with gin from Sydney distillery Archie Rose and StrangeLove Dirty Tonic from Melbourne. The cocktail list has some more unusual choices — Rhubarb Fizz (homemade rhubarb syrup and sparkling wine) or a Hemingway (pampero rum, maraschino liqueur and lime) — but the G & T is a fine choice. It’s garnished with juniper berries, which we discover taste mildly peppery.

A bowl of chunky golden polenta chips are crisp and soft in all the right places, and the sweet, crunchy salt and pepper school prawns clearly come from a very good school.

Mode has achieved a difficult thing. It adjoins the hotel’s vast atrium foyer, but cleverly uses frosted, fluted glass walls, soft, overhanging bistro lights and luxurious carpet that looks like rippled water to create a calm, cocooned space, as the hotel goes about its business on the other side.

For dinner we move further inside, sliding into a white leather bench-seated booth. A mirror angled above the table reflects the beautiful fabric screen with silhouettes of eucalypt trees that separates the bar from the restaurant.

Another detail distracts us here. As my companion remarks, it’s hard to concentrate on the food when all you want to do is stroke the side plates, which come from Bendigo pottery.

Not that the food isn’t worth concentrating on. The risotto with asparagus and morel mushrooms is vibrant and perfectly cooked, as is the special of red mullet, seared for six minutes in the 400-degree wood-oven, as the waiter informs us. With a side of Chinese broccoli with chilli and garlic (way more delicious than it sounds) and two glasses of white (Wild Oats Pinot grigio and Nugen Estate chardonnay), we’re set.

We have no intention of dessert, but the waiter waxes lyrical about the fennel pollen ice-cream that reminds him of his childhood in Sicily. Oh all right then. It comes in a volcanic-black chilled bowl, and if you like aniseed, it’s subtle and elegant.

On the way out we admire the chef’s table. It looks like a long wooden bench but the sides are chairs that slide out to accommodate larger groups. The impressive stone-clad wood-fire oven looks like something a Dr Who villain might travel in, and we’d like to take the arrow-shaped wine rack home.

It all feels very right — hopefully that means Mode is here to stay.