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You don’t so much arrive at Bar Morris as check in. The newly opened restaurant and bar also acts as reception for the Hotel Morris, which means when you turn up, it’s best to say you want a table, or you might get a room for the night instead.

This slightly oddball situation brings a lot of transitional energy to the space, as guests arrive from airports and train stations, complete with carry-on luggage. After checking in to their rooms, quite a few of them return for a drink at the bar or for dinner. One bloke orders two flutes of champagne, then takes them back to his room. A lone diner sits on the jury bench at the back and works her way through three courses while on her computer.

Not having one of the 82 bedrooms for the night, I settle in at a table and admire the hotel’s bones. Built in 1929 as a rare example of Italian Renaissance architecture by Virgil Dante Cizzio, the Morris was Australia’s tallest hotel for 34 years. As part of the Handwritten Collection, it’s now operated by hotel giant Accor, but feels like an indie start-up, thanks to the hands-on general manager Atsuko Asano.

Keen young staffers Louis Lim and Josh Simpson are lively and can-do, and the same liberated attitude runs through the interior. Walls are clad in leather, the bar is marble and the banquettes velvet, enriched with hot-red rods of light and over-the-top chandeliers by interior design group Tom Mark Henry.

The cooking is Italian but non-cliched, put through the filter of Puglia-born chef Rosy Scatigna, previously sous chef at Shell House, working with culinary director, Joel Bickford, in her first head chef role.

So, there’s a savoury 𝄒nduja madeleine with preserved lemon and guanciale ($10 each), the normally sweet cake swapping sugar for parmigiano, sandwiching a spicy 𝄒nduja paste and thin folds of cured guanciale (pork cheek). It sets just the right tone; not your usual fun snack. Ten, please.

This is sociable food, easy to order and to eat, in a multi-tasking space that flows from breakfast to lunch to dinner. Salumi comes with crisp shards of gnocco fritto ($30), always a good move; and broad beans ($9) are whipped with paprika oil. Six mussels come gratinated in the half shell ($18), but feel shrunken and dry under their crumbs. Saffron aioli doesn’t add much, and the little fennel salad needs more acidity.

Scatigna likes to ignore the obvious, and the two pasta dishes are of interest. A vegetarian spaghettone is tossed with celeriac, hazelnut and bay leaf ($28), and cannelloni ($32) avoids the beefy, cheesy, easy way out by being stuffed with a little Genovese pork-neck ragu and sauteed bitter green leaves. Lightly coated with tomato sugo, smoky scamorza and curly endive, it feels Italian.

You can order spatchcock as half or whole ($32/$56). Brined, cooked sous vide, then flash-roasted, it’s served on a bed of onion soubise, with a fiery fermented chilli and garlic sauce on the side to make it diavola-style. Long green shishito peppers play a kind of culinary Russian roulette with their random heat – one of them nearly kills both me and the power-packed biodynamic 2021 Yangarra GSM from McLaren Vale ($17/$87).

Desserts are pretty simple, possibly to take the heat off the kitchen. A wedge of pear frangipane ($18) implodes under the fork, and fig granita ($18) is teamed with coconut gelato, grilled figs and saba (grape must).

As I leave, another couple rolls up to the bar with their luggage, gazing around at the wines being poured at lamp-lit tables. This very modern duality of purpose makes dining – and checking in – a lot of fun.

Perhaps every hotel lobby should be a buzzy, marble-clad, bottle-lined, chandelier-topped dining room filled with high-energy staff who look as if they are having fun, instead of the boringly formal holding pens they can so often be. Good call, Bar Morris.