When you let the creative behind some of the city’s favourite and wackiest venues past and present – Honkytonks, The Bottom End, Sorry Grandma – loose on a venue, suddenly dining under the glass-eyed gaze of an albino peacock and hairy mountain goat in a New York-style steakhouse makes complete sense.

As does a three-martini lunch.

But such is Michael Delany’s exuberant vision for Natural History – a 350-seat Collins Street behemoth that takes in stuffed animals and steaks, caviar and cocktails, pints and porchetta – it’s proving popular with suits by day and party animals by night.

Natural History is the most ambitious offering from the growing 100 Burgers Group (Mr Burger, Welcome to Thornbury, Hightail). Here Morgan McGlone (Belles Hot Chicken) serves up a menu of classics – oysters, parfait, Caesar salad – that segues via burgers to steaks on the grill.

Service is friendly but haphazard, and so too the cooking. Bullseye hits – one of the best fish burgers in the country, for instance – are let down by unforgivable misses (is a steakhouse with damp, floury chips a steakhouse at all?).

Simple is best. With a soy-cured egg and beef tendon crisps, the steak tartare is overthought and fussy; an expensive prawn cocktail is little more than a tongue-in-cheek joke. The hanger steak with smoky crust and deep purple inner, however, is excellent. A salty Graham cracker base for the effortlessly light cheesecake is similarly inspired.

Natural wine makes up the bulk of the impressive 200-strong list, while Animals Dancing has programmed an excellent soundtrack, with DJs on the decks late in the week.

Natural History is more good times than gastronomy – a disco diner for a 20-to-40-something crew where eating’s no longer cheating, but it’s not the main event either. Unless you’re three martinis in, of course.