IF YOU want to know where fine dining goes next, some clues can be found in the broody dining space that is Automata. Youngish chef Clayton Wells is classically trained (he last worked at Momofuku Seiobo) but does not take a stuffy, backwardlooking approach to cuisine. Rather step inside Wells’s sleek and masculine restaurant to mine a somewhat austere menu that at once manages to challenge while retaining enough elements of the familiar to offer comfort.

JUST when you think you have a handle on where the Australian dining scene is at, somewhere new opens to challenge your cherished preconceptions and beliefs.