This is how restaurants used to be, with white-clothed tables, marble columns, white-jacketed waiters, tartan carpet, the occasional chandelier, a trolley of rum and a jazz pianist on a grand piano.

The Bentley Restaurant Group has taken over a stately heritage-listed space originally built as a bank, and designed, as banks used to be designed, to display strength, optimism and unmitigated possibilities. But something else appears to have been restored. This is how diners used to be, too: neatly dressed, with cuffed and collared shirts, leather shoes, groomed hair. Conversations rise above the tables in a gentle mist; nobody brays or rubber-necks.