With a flexible menu built for maximum flavour, Etta’s sister Daphne is easy to love

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If a first restaurant is usually a manifestation of someone’s vision, an expression of their interior ambitions, the sophomore restaurant is more often a reaction to the market and the location – an acceptance of exterior influence. This is certainly the case with Daphne, the second venue from restaurateur Hannah Green, who has been delighting East Brunswick at Etta for nine years as of this month.

Where Etta is small, upscale, quietly ambitious, built for date night, Daphne is larger, more affordable, more casual, and built for whatever you want it to be. You can see the influence of the neighbourhood and its changing demographics on Daphne’s personality and business plan. A couple of doors down, B.East, a raucous burger bar and music club, recently shuttered. Perhaps its customers have moved on from cheap beer and now would prefer a martini; maybe they even want a nice restaurant that also has a kid’s menu. Daphne can provide.

The Lygon Street space, just metres from Etta, takes some of its cues from the American diner, albeit one that’s muted and chic rather than retro and garish. The front area has a big communal table and window seating that’s great for casual drinks, while the back is a mix of booths and tables. Bar seating lines a counter that stretches down the left side of the room, facing the small bar area and larger open kitchen. It all feels very convivial.

Green is known for many great things, and her wine smarts and exuberant brand of hospitality are on full display at Daphne. She is back and forth between both venues on most nights, but the staff here do fine on their own when she’s not in the room. These are friendly folk, enthusiastic and professional.

Where Etta is small, upscale, quietly ambitious, built for date night, Daphne is larger, more affordable, more casual, and built for whatever you want it to be.

In the kitchen, Dane Hewson is now manning the pans, taking over from Diana Desensi who was the opening chef. Dishes are slowly changing, though the brief is not: give the people a flexible menu that delivers maximum flavour with minimum challenge.

If you’re just here for a snack and a martini (there are multiple versions, and they’re only $15 on Mondays), I can’t let you go past the mortadella skewer, a crispy, salty, fatty couple of mouthfuls, interspersed with the sweetness and acid of pickled pumpkin.

A pillowy fermented potato “flatbread” is misnamed – it is hardly flat – and topped with whipped cod and puckery mussels escabeche. This season’s tomatoes were recently presented in a beautiful salad meant to mimic a bloody mary; this week they’re being showcased in a parmesan cream and pickled shallot situation.

Most of what’s on offer is food that’s just plain easy to love. The sage brown butter on a spinach and cheese ravioli is deeply savoury. The roast chicken comes with tangy black garlic glaze and lemon, and the juicy rock flathead is covered in a classic tomato, garlic and caper butter.

There were things on the original menu at Daphne with which I took issue: I’m happy to see the $29 hot dog retired because, unless that thing is doused in truffle, no hot dog should cost that much (and, honestly, no hot dog should be doused in truffle).

The “Cobb salad” remains, and I can’t say I’m a fan, in part because this is no Cobb salad, one of the greatest things to ever come out of Hollywood. (It was invented in the 1930s at the Brown Derby, the iconic Los Angeles restaurant shaped like a hat.) This salad is chopped, yes, but where the original has chicken, bacon, avocado, egg and blue cheese, the version at Daphne is more of a deconstructed Russian salad, relying on beetroot to replace the meats, and subbing in ranch dressing for the traditional vinaigrette. I may be giving short shrift to this salad based on semantics, but the prospect of a true Cobb was so exciting that the disappointment was fierce.

Far less disappointing: a chocolate mousse so good I kind of wished the crunchy milk crumb was left off so I could appreciate the airy, fluffy, creamy texture in all its glory.

Daphne is an attempt at the perfect neighbourhood restaurant, somewhere you could bring the kids or bring the parents, somewhere you could stop into for a cheeky martini or settle in for a $120 steak.

It has some growing to do to figure out exactly what about it is essential, what can be improved upon, and what can go. But there’s no doubt that the effort is in good faith. We should all be so lucky to have someone trying so very hard to please us.

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.