There are restaurants that you should love. The kind that arrive with such an impeccable set of credentials that loving them feels almost like an obligation; the right chef, the right training, the right philosophy, the right accolades.

You want to love them.

You keep giving them chances. And each time you sit down, you find yourself waiting for something that never quite materialises.

Restaurant Dan Arnold is, for me, that restaurant.

On paper, the case is unequivocal.

Dan Arnold is a Brisbane boy who spent seven years sharpening his skills in some of the finest kitchens in France; a year under Marc Meneau at the 3-Michelin-starred L’Espérance, then six years under Serge Vieira, rising through the ranks to Sous Chef. 

I’ve now visited three times. The first was a few years back, when the Girl and I were in Brisbane on a trip from Hong Kong; she’d been raving about RDA ever since she’d visited with our mates Fi and Kev.

At the time, we’d been eating our way through some genuinely exceptional meals and arrived with high expectations that the evening didn’t quite meet. The second was last year, not long after we’d moved back for good; better, but still not the experience I’d hoped for.

I’d put some of that down to recalibration; we’d just come from a decade of access to some of the world’s finest tables, and perhaps the comparison was unfair.

So I gave it a third chance. A solo Saturday lunch; as it happened, the Girl had organised a day with her workmates that involved a foot massage and lunch just around the corner in James Street, which left me with a rare and pleasantly unscheduled afternoon to indulge.

I booked only a few days in advance and secured a table without difficulty.

I love the room at RDA. Always have. It carries that quiet Nordic confidence; light timber chairs with black leather seats, dark walls, slatted timber details, a warm simplicity that just settles around you. For dinner, when the room is full, it hums in exactly the right way. On this Saturday at midday, I was the only person in it for the first hour. Just me, a chef working somewhere in the kitchen, and a waitress doing her best to bring warmth to a room designed for a crowd.

It was an odd experience. Beautiful in its way; the daytime light does things to that space that a dinner service never could. But the emptiness said something about Saturday lunchtimes in Brisbane’s fine dining scene that I couldn’t quite ignore. At 1pm, a single other party arrived. For most of the meal, though, it was just the three of us.

I ordered the Experience menu at $198, and in short time the kitchen started sending.

And it sent quickly. With only one person in the restaurant, the courses arrived at a pace that a full room would naturally slow down. By the time the main courses began, I was already fuller than I would have liked. The bread; a dark grain loaf alongside some brioche, arriving with butter I’d been genuinely looking forward to, went almost entirely untouched.

I managed to press a piece of brioche into the sauce of one later course, which I’ll come to shortly; the rest sat there while I moved on. At $198 for the Experience menu, missing the bread service wasn’t a big deal, but it was a small and heartfelt loss.

The four amuse bouche that opened the meal were a mixed and interesting set. The first, a puff of comté, was everything an amuse bouche should be; warm, very light pastry with a yielding core of soft, punchy cheese, complete and satisfying in a single mouthful. Exactly the right tone to set.

The second, a crab salad with corn and lemongrass, leaned into Thai-influenced territory with a chilli heat that built slowly rather than punching me in the face. For someone who approaches chilli with considerable caution, the slow build landed nicely; the problem was elsewhere. The flavours felt muddied rather than layered, the individual elements competing for attention rather than combining into something coherent, and the crab itself was too easily lost in the process. A dish where restraint might have produced more clarity?

Third was a tart of eggplant and pastrami; thin, consistent pastry, a filling of savoury-sweet pastrami with a faint heat that lingered pleasantly afterward. Pretty on the plate and pleasant in the mouth; a dish that did exactly what you’d hope.

The fourth, smoked salmon with wasabi cream presented taco-style, was a highlight of the opening sequence. The crunch of the shell, the measured presence of wasabi; enough to register clearly, not enough to overwhelm; and a finish that stayed with you in the right way. (I didn’t really place any smokiness in the salmon, but it was still lovely); the flavour combination worked nicely and made me happy.

Then came the regular courses, and with them, the finest single dish of my three visits to Restaurant Dan Arnold.

The scallop with abalone terrine and buttermilk sauce was exceptional…. And I definitely mean that in the precise sense of the word, as something that sits outside the ordinary run of things. A perfectly seared scallop, alongside a terrine of abalone that had been cooked with real care; tender, moreish, beautifully constructed. The buttermilk sauce was the kind that makes you reach for bread without thinking, which is exactly what I did, pressing a piece of brioche to mop up any remains of that sauce.

This dish would hold its own in any 2 or 3-Michelin-starred restaurant we’ve visited. It was that good.

The toothfish with courgette and mint continued promisingly. A generous piece of fish, cooked with precision; buttery, flaky, carrying that clean depth that toothfish delivers when it’s handled properly. The courgette sauce was smooth and well-judged, the bitter edge of the courgette slices and the sweetness of the rounds working around each other rather than past each other. A thread of chilli oil brought warmth without demanding attention. Good; and notably generous in portion for a tasting menu course.

Continuing with the very generous portion sizes, Tthe lamb with red cabbage, mushroom and red wine sauce was a solid middle act. The cabbage carried a pleasant pickled sweetness, the mushrooms added earthiness, and the sauce was sticky and mostly satisfying. The mustard was tucked inside the cabbage rather than presented separately; an interesting placement that provided a link little surprise. The lamb itself was nicely cooked, full-flavoured, balanced well against the stickiness of the sauce… I found it hard to finish though, starting to feel full and my palate feeling a tad overwhelmed by the lamb.

And then there was the duck.

The duck with carrot, date and duck sausage is the dish that will stay with me, and not for the right reasons. The breast was overcooked; not catastrophically so, but enough to produce that particular quality; somewhere between resistance and firmness; that tells you the protein didn’t get what it needed. The skin, which should have been the defining element of a duck course, had none of the crispness that separates a great duck dish from an average one. The carrots arrived unevenly cooked; some offering the right balance of give and structure, others not. The duck sausage was assertive to the point of unbalancing the plate; it had its own strong flavour agenda that the other components couldn’t absorb. The carrot purée and duck sauce were genuinely good; sticky, punchy, well-made.

But a beautiful sauce cannot rescue a dish that has been let down at the protein. For a kitchen that produced the scallop course earlier in the same menu, the duck felt like a lapse in concentration.

The palate cleanser that followed; buffalo yoghurt with grape sorbet, crispy grapes and crumble; was light and nice without being particularly memorable. The sorbet was smooth and creamy, the grapes providing welcome textural contrast; the yoghurt, while silky in texture, didn’t offer much in the way of flavour. A gentle bridge to the final course, but little more.

The dessert, fig with fig leaf ice cream and gavotte, arrived looking considered and precise; a clean cylinder, delicate construction, a prettiness that promised something delightful. What it delivered was a version of fig that had been worked too hard. The freshness and natural sweetness of the fruit had been processed into something closer to a jam at the base; the fig leaf ice cream was notable more as a technical exercise than as something that tasted of anything at all. It felt like a dessert that prioritised technique and appearance over the quality and freshness of the ingredient it was built around.

Was it worth $198? In part. The scallop alone justifies the trip; it is, quite genuinely, one of the finest individual dishes I have eaten, and I don’t say that lightly given the restaurants I’ve visited around the world in the last decade or so. The production values throughout are evident, the service was warm and genuinely attentive (the waitress doing fine work in a room that was essentially empty), and the kitchen clearly has the technical foundation to produce exceptional food.

Having said all that, I’ll probably not head back for a fourth attempt.. Three visits is a fair sample. Across all of them, only one dish has stayed with me as truly exceptional; and while that scallop is a remarkable thing, a three-hat restaurant should be producing moments of that quality throughout the menu, not just in one course. The duck let the side down badly, and the dessert never found what it was looking for.

I don’t really want to comment on whether I think RDA is worthy of 3 Hats or not.. When I talk to the Girl and our friends about their visit, and speak to other friends, they’ve had the type of experiences I could only have hoped for…

On its best day, when that scallop course comes out of the kitchen in full flight, RDA show’s glimpses of perfection.  But on the day the duck arrives overcooked and the dessert loses its way; I’m not at all sure where it would sit.

Brisbane’s dining scene has moved quickly in recent years, and there are restaurants in this city now producing consistently exceptional food that I find more compelling visit after visit. RDA, for all its pedigree and all my genuine goodwill toward it, has been overtaken. I hope it finds another gear; the foundations are clearly there.

But don’t think I’ll be the one waiting to find out.