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They call this part of town the Sandstone Precinct due to the abundance of magnificent buildings hewn from Sydney’s favourite golden stone. They may have to refer it to in future as the Leather, Marble and Whole Roasted Duck Precinct instead.

Now that the high-end hotel Capella Sydney has moved into the heritage-listed former Department of Education building, with its mesmerising collection of Australian paintings and lighting installations, towering ceilings and indoor swimming pool, there’s sheer bloody luxury by the metre.

Colonising the ground floor corner is a restaurant overseen by Brent Savage and Nick Hildebrandt of Sydney’s celebrated Bentley Restaurant Group, with light spilling in through tall steel-framed windows that face onto Bridge and Young streets.

They call it a brasserie, but it’s a pretty grand brasserie, with its leather banquettes, marble tiles, brass-bound tables and glorious floral displays. Walk in, and you will immediately feel underdressed, among the gleaming elegance of the smoky mirrors, burnished ice buckets and subtle brasserie lamps. The word majestic springs to mind.

So it’s not as if they can just send out a sausage roll.

Brent Savage and head chef Niroshan Richards call the food “classic brasserie with an Australian spin”, which is cute but not necessarily helpful.

A classic move such as a vegetable tart, for instance, is crisp, buttery pastry holding a pretty composition of salt-brined daikon, roasted and raw yellow squash and fresh breakfast radish. They perch on wattleseed curd, with chervil and dill peeping out as if they had grown there. Fresh and delicate, it’s like a wander through the kitchen garden.

The lavishness is bolstered by linen napkins, rough-hewn charger plates and uniformed waitstaff with that attentive but not servile manner that Australia does so well.

Amid such riches is richness. Flinders Island scallops ($38) are sauced on the half-shell, spliced with nectarine and topped with scarlet finger lime and pickled wakame - spiked mouthfuls of luxury.

Spaghetti alla chitarra with spanner crab ($52) is richly sauced and garnished with fat lobes of sea urchin, but at what point is something just too rich?

Glazed quail ($38) is cleverly imagined as two halves resting on whippy feta with a gorgeous green olive salsa, and a lovely fillet of steamed coral trout ($68) sits serenely on a pillow of potato yoghurt puree with grilled pencil leeks in attendance.

They call it a brasserie, but it’s a pretty grand brasserie, with its leather banquettes, marble tiles, brass-bound tables and glorious floral displays.

The room acts as a brasserie in that people use it in different ways. Two women order the signature dish of roast Tathra Place Maremma duck ($190) with a bottle of pinot noir, and demolish both (that’s an entire duck, by the way, with crisp-skinned breast, neck sausage, roasted plum, fennel, spinach and glazed eschalot).

Corporates order Yarabah’s F1 wagyu 250-gram rump cap, O’Connor’s 400-gram bone-in sirloin or Coppertree Farms 600-gram rib-eye grilled over ironbark, and cover the table with all four sides – leaf salad, green beans, roast Andean potatoes and fries.

Cooked precisely to the rare side of medium rare and served sliced next to its bone, the sirloin ($85) is a big serve for one but delivers long flavour and a relaxed chew.

Luke Curry’s juicy 2021 Banjo pinot noir ($110) from the Mornington Peninsula is equally classy and long-flavoured – and tastes even better when you are aware it’s named for his dog. Hildebrandt ensures the wine lover can go from the rare and unique to a more approachable focus on newer wine-makers (and their vineyard dogs).

Desserts are classic, with a wedge of expertly made brown sugar tart served with figs ($24), and there is a rather grand trolley of cheeses ready to roll if you are.

It’s an interesting move for the Bentley team. With its splendid surroundings, high comfort and signature duck dish, Brasserie 1930 aligns more with the city’s other grand brasserie, The Charles, than it does with its own high-art Bentley restaurant or jazzy Monopole wine bar.

One more of this ilk, and we’ll have to call the CBD the Grand Brasserie Precinct instead.