Inside, the hum of conversation rises like the heat from a warm oven. Co-owner and maitre d’ Joe Valore — as dapper as any Madrilenos career waiter — and the unflappably gorgeous Rachel Doyle (her sister Sarah Doyle being elsewhere tonight) patrol the floor, alert, smiling, moving the pace along in a calm and all-seeing way that makes them the benchmark hospitality duo in Sydney.

Walk past the asado (fire pit) where a suckling pig has been roasting on its Argentinian crucifix since morning, filling the restaurant with the irresistible scent of barbecue. Spy as you do, chefs Ben Milgate and Elvis Abrahanowicz sweating over their stations, before taking a seat at either a banquette or up at the bar (large groups are seated at round tables complete with lazy susans), as the soft evening light of Sydney pours into the restaurant. If ever there’s been a restaurant with a perfect sense of place, and a perfect sense of itself, it’s this one. Porteno 2.0 has arrived.

In case you’ve missed the update, Porteno has relocated from its original grandiose premises on Cleveland St (a site that has been turned into a Porteno function centre) to this more modest space that previously housed Melbourne import, MoVida. The new space feels more bistro, slightly more relaxed, and yet somehow more sophisticated. Has Porteno grown up? Yes, that’s it.

Food wise, the menu has changed somewhat too. There’s less focus on the previous demand a table order its barbecued meats with a heap of sides, and a new emphasis on wholly conceptual dishes. The food remains Argentinian, but certainly more bistro than barbecue.

There does remain a very South American emphasis on meat, even if the opening tranch of the menu has some excellent seafood dishes and salads. A luxe crab salad ($26) gets a Hispanic make over via crab browned on the woodfire and offered with grilled gem lettuce, palm hearts and a sweet, ketchup-rich salsa golf, a coming together of delicate flavours and textures that’s truly heady, while unusual, and good, is a chickpea pancake ($18) dotted with sweet olive paste, dobs of ricotta and mint that’s a wild melange of such varied textures and flavours as to be indefinable.

Other bistro dishes are given a Latin kick along — seafood cocktail ($28) is served with tomato habanera sauce and tostones, while octopus is offered alongside pork belly in a roll with radish and rocket ($24).

Mains are deeply carnivorous, with chorizo ($14), morcilla ($18), and veal sweetbreads ($25) competing for interest alongside the daily asado-cooked beasts, today’s being suckling pig ($50) that’s all luscious salty meat and crackling with a side of kale, together so perfect in their simplicity.

Rich and rare is an astonishing slab of wagyu skirt steak ($44) over roasted capsicums, a carnal interpretation of this fairy-floss meat given depth via a garlicky salsa verde.

There’s a South American lean in the wine and cocktails list that you’d expect, all part of a package that amounts to a seductive entirety of wonderful food, Sydney’s best service and atmosphere. People often ask me what my favourite restaurant in Sydney is. This may well be it.

This review originally appeared on news.com.au.