It's the intergenerational dilemma of our age. You're carousing with mates at a local hangout and having a fine old time when you look over at the next table and see your parents. They're also carousing, but still – talk about a fun-killer. It's bad enough that your mum follows you on Instagram – and posts actual comments. Does she have to like the same restaurants too?

So you can see why the Merivale Group had to buy The Centennial, just 600 metres away from its popular pub The Paddington. Now they can practically divvy up the entire eastern suburbs between them.

This Woollahra institution, revitalised in 2014 by the Medich family, is like the parental version of The Paddo. Instead of being packed in like chickens on a spit and loud as hell, you are ensconced in deeply comfortable seats, with natural light, space between tables, and striking photographic art anchoring Luchetti Krelle's original taupe-on-taupe interior.

If there are a few signs of scuffing, then what the hell. You become more forgiving of wear and tear as you get older. You have to.

Bridging the generation gap is Ben Greeno, executive chef of both The Paddington and The Centennial. Here, with collaborators Danielle Alvarez of Fred's and head chef James Evangelinos (back from New York's Musket Room), he has put together an inviting, not-too-fussy menu of Mediterranean comfort food, built around the restaurant's wood-fired oven.

So begin with one of the flatbreads ($14-$18), served with anything from merguez and minced lamb to – the best – tomato, garlic and parmigiano.

Otherwise, go for the spanner crab crostino ($26), a parental version of The Paddo's fabulous crab on toast with herb salad, here teamed with fine shavings of celery and fennel – equally fabulous.

While every second chef loudly claims to keep things simple, Greeno and Alvarez just quietly go ahead and do it. Their reasoning is unarguable: that small, fresh squid flash-cooked in the wood-fired oven should be teamed with naught but a rich, golden aioli and a truss of juicy little wood-fired tomatoes ($25). Well, of course they should.

And that a whole, meaty, wood-fired yellow-belly flounder ($43), cooked until the bones lightly and reluctantly release the sweet, clean-tasting flesh, needs only a roasted lemon and an intense seaweed salsa verde. Couldn't agree more.

And you'd have to have lost all your marbles already to not think a whole roasted nectarine with thyme and olive oil served with a beautiful vanilla ice-cream ($16) is anything other than truly pleasing.

Greeno calls the food "what you'd like to make at home, but rather go out for". That includes crusty, grilled, pinkly rare, caul-wrapped duck livers with pancetta, sage and balsamic ($24), fat-tailed lamb cutlets with crushed potatoes and rocket ($44) and steak frites with mustard butter ($48).

Service is super-nice and on the ball, although waits can stretch out at peak hours. And there's more intergenerational input – restaurant manager Megan Sullivan is the daughter of former Aria co-owners Peter and Susan Sullivan.

If your idea of a good time is being able to see what you're eating and hear yourself think, eating food you recognise cooked (very well) in ways you understand, then get on down to The Centennial. Perhaps you'd better write that down, so you don't forget it.

Cost: About $145 for two, plus drinks.

Vegetarian: Flatbreads, salads, pasta – nothing madly exciting.

Drinks: Everything from easy Mediterranean-friendly wines to look-at-me stars such as 2010's Franco Biondi Santi Tenuta Greppo at $550. Check out the reds and whites listed under "Interesting".