The dining room on the third floor of Mama Mulan – owner Kim Jin’s first Shandong-style restaurant in Sydney – has a style that hints at the cuisine that awaits. The space looks similar to a bunker, filled with desert-like texture and tone, with dimly lit, French-style limewashed walls ceding the spotlight to soft, fleshy suede drapes. Geometric light fixtures hang like antlers from the ceiling. Classic Thonet chairs comfortably seat 250 diners before marble tables. It’s big but not at the expense of cosiness.

Lobster comes with a mouth-numbing Sichuan peppercorn sauce, while the plump sweetness of fresh mud crab finds a worthy companion in spring onion, ginger and shallots. This dish is best enjoyed “typhoon style” – flash fried in fermented-bean sauce with spring onions and a liberal downpour of chilli and garlic. Dumplings and noodles are all rolled and hand-pulled in-house. For lunch, fried noodles come with prawns, mussels and calamari or with black-pepper Wagyu beef. Classics like prawn pot stickers and steamed pork xiao long bao are available, too. Pork belly is braised with cinnamon, star anise and chilli, and crispy-duck pancakes are a Shandong staple.

Dessert is courtesy of Chris and Dylan Duong (no relation) of Duo Duo and could be something as interesting as panko-crumbed vanilla ice-cream with salted caramel-butterscotch popcorn.

The clever and reasonably priced wine list is broken into categories such as “aromatic and odoriferous” or the more subdued “light and elegant.” Expect the likes of marsanne-rousanne-viognier blend from Lark Hill in Canberra, Pascal Reverdy sancerre from the Loire Valley and Didier Montchovet biodynamic coteaux Burgundy.