There’s an axiom among chefs when it comes to gauging the quality of a kitchen’s mettle: look to the soup. Hey, if a restaurant can’t manage a decent stock, what kind of chance does it have with more elaborate menu items?

Thankfully owner/chef John Pekka Woods of Alice’s Restaurant passes with flying colours. His fennel and mussel saffron cream soup ($8) not only proves the old adage correct, it is a perfect potage. Served piping hot and laden with crocus threads, the soup’s slices of sea scallop provide a tender counterpoint to the well-seasoned, silky smooth bisque-like broth. No grumbles here, especially when you have a plentiful mound of National Bakery Portuguese corn bread with which to sop it up.

A pan-roasted Cornish hen ($22) topped with sunchoke chips is as masterful, showcasing a deft hand. It takes guts to serve a bird with a sauce gribiche (essentially mayonnaise with cubed cornichons folded in) that leaves the meat naked, without the security of a moisture-enhancing sauce to hide flaws from overcooking. Deliciously moist and succulent on its own, this plumper puts Woods in our good books.

With such flair evident so early on in the meal, great expectations mount, in spite of a slim selection on Woods’ seasonal carte. But what it lacks in selection, it virtually guarantees in focus and finesse from the Stratford-trained cook — a true practitioner of the fusionary arts.

Plump morsels of roasted black cod ($23), for example, glisten atop perfectly textured slices of sweet potato in a shimmering pool of soy-enhanced black bean broth topped with pea shoots. A pair of fluffy, golden brown crab cakes ($12), while slightly too tater-filled for the price, get jumped up with significant swirls of parsley oil and a well-executed orange reduction that never even comes close to cloying. Even a Caesar salad ($9) in a fine, fishy house-made dressing with thick shavings of salty Reggiano impresses — but you might be tempted to eat the spears of whole heart-of-romaine leaves with your fingers instead of using your fork. (Trust us when we say it’s less messy that way.)

But cutting into a 12-ounce Manhattan steak (that’d be a rib-eye), however, reveals a problem. Ironically, the cut is riddled with fat pockets, yet the perfectly grill-marked hunk of beef is dry, bordering on flavourless. Even fantastic frites are ridiculously over-salted. And while we applaud Woods for serving top-shelf salmon on his small bites platter ($12), it would be politic to let us know prior to ordering (and not upon the plate’s arrival) that the advertised house-cured lox that was to be alongside the selection of Pingue salumi was missing because chef was unable to source his usual wild salmon. To be fair, our quirky but friendly server (the chef’s sister-in-law), warned us that she was new to the game (and we’re advised the salmon has since been dropped).

But a dessert disaster waits in the wings, and it hits in the form of a citrus meringue tower ($8). The crunchy egg whites are indeed as advertised, but large wedges of segmented orange and grapefruit make this nothing but a glorified fruit salad that’s very difficult to eat. (If, however, the price includes being reimbursed for your shirt’s dry cleaning, we can live with that.) Back on track we go with a traditional pound cake ($8).

Monsieur Woods has been in town for little more than half a year, having spent the last eight plying his trade in the heart of slow-food heaven, Niagara-on-the-Lake. So being transplanted to the big city is bound to bring some growing pains for a seasonal boîte in a city with less abundant local sources. In time, though, we feel pretty confident that we will be able to say: “Look out Scot, there’s a new Woods in town.”