Silver screen dining experience Trak opens to rave review | SA Weekend restaurant review

Three of Adelaide’s best restaurant operators have teamed up again to revive a venue with a proud dining history.

The dining room at Trak restaurant, Toorak Gardens.

It’s the little things that matter. The countless pieces of minutiae. The baffles in the ceiling. The muted soundtrack. The curtains. The humorous asides at the table. That glass of neb with the duck. And, yes, the bite-sized packages of succulent confit chicken and raw prawn that suddenly make those by-the-number snacks elsewhere look kinda boring.

Behind all these little decisions, however, is one enormous, invaluable advantage: the years of experience to know what works – and, just as importantly, what doesn’t.

That’s why Trak, newly opened in the former cinema complex on Greenhill Rd, looks like triumphing in a location that has, in recent times, been a dining Bermuda Triangle.

Tommy ruff, spicy carrots, hazelnuts at Trak restaurant, Toorak Gardens

The restaurant is the latest creation of chef Quentin Whittle and co-owners Ben McLeod and Paul Tripodi who first joined forces five years ago to create Herringbone in the south of the city. Their combined CV also includes names such as Peel St, Aquacaf, Georges on Waymouth, Stone’s Throw ­– right back to Melt and The Melting Pot in the early 2000s.

Delving even deeper into Adelaide restaurant history will bring you to Grimaldi’s, a smart-casual Italian diner that lived happily in a symbiotic relationship with the Trak cinema for three decades until both closed around 2019.

Subsequent attempts at an Argentinian, then a Greek, then another Italian eatery in the space were all short-lived and it had been sitting empty for some time when the new trio took over.

They gutted pretty much everything, installing a new kitchen and a bar with room for counter dining. A long, olive-green banquette runs down one side and, above that, the window that had looked on to a soulless mall is now screened by copper-coloured drapes.

Acoustics have been addressed by baffles in the low ceiling and turning down the volume on the ’70s-’80s playlist. Nothing groundbreaking or showy … just comfortable and lived-in.

McLeod and manager Emma Benbow keep up this relaxed vibe, even with a packed house, happily dispensing advice on what to drink from a wine list where, if you don’t want to pay north of $70 for a bottle, it’s best to stick by the glass.

Pistachio and pink peppercorn semi-freddo at Trak restaurant, Toorak Gardens

A menu that is brief in length but not short on ideas does help balance the equation. There’s no pressure to consider a multi-course chef’s menu (it isn’t even offered) and no one will have a hissy-fit if all you want is one decent plate of food for dinner.

Of course, that would mean skipping past the little tarts of tomato, nectarine and gorgonzola. And that snack mentioned earlier in which a raw prawn spoons with a deboned lozenge of confit chicken in an iceberg lettuce hammock.

Butterflied gar fillets are smeared with an aromatic chermoula paste, roasted and then concealed beneath overlapping discs of fermented carrots that could be seen as scales by those with vivid imaginations.

Roasted hazelnuts, marinated currants and a sweet vinegar dressing that has mingled with some spicy seepage complete a combination I reckon would ring the bells even louder with a fish that had a stronger personality, like the tommies being used now.

A few pedantic Italians might find the spring vegetable risotto has too much of everything else and doesn’t truly celebrate the rice. Most other folk, I think, will appreciate the abundance of peas, asparagus (raw and cooked), green beans and braised late-season broad beans stirred through the grains, as well as the lemon rind, creme fraiche and basil pistou added at the end.

Spring vegetable risotto at Trak restaurant, Toorak Gardens

On one level the duck is a most un-cheffy, home-style combination: a roasted leg (albeit after an initial confit session), cotechino sausage, roasted parsnip, green beans, leaves of radicchio and pickled cherries, all tossed on to the plate as if it was a Wednesday night family dinner. Then, as you appreciate the honesty of it all, you will also begin to notice the way the cherry juices have been used to temper the poultry jus, and then how this melds with a walnut vinaigrette. That’s why they get the big bucks!

Same goes for the genius of adding pink peppercorns to a pistachio semifreddo that is topped with roasted strawberries and their glossy syrup. Yes, it’s those little things again.