Modern Australian cooking is not an easy thing to define. Even Aussies themselves don’t seem to agree about what it means: some say it is the fatty colonial cuisine of the British that has never quite disappeared from kitchens down under. Others claim it is all about game meats and fish unavailable anywhere else in the world: kangaroo, emu, Moreton Bay bugs, and barramundi, to name a few. And then there are those that consider Australian cusine to be a process more than a collection of recipes; to them, Oz cooking amounts to nothing more than drawing inspiration from Australia’s multicultural population (made up of primarily Mediterranean and Asian immigrants) and cooking with fresh ingredients that come mostly from Australia’s bountiful natural resources. The disagreement might not seem like an important one, but because it exists, is nearly impossible to predetermine what kind of meal one is likely to have at an Australian restaurant without actually eating there. So when Schnicksy, Pescatore, HungryMan and I met up at Eight Mile Creek in the heart of NoLita, we girded ourselves for just about anything.

What we found was an interesting combination of exotic game cookery and antipodean melting pot fusion cuisine–just enough of a twist to keep us guessing until the very end of the meal. We started with a few of the usual suspects: emu carpaccio with arugula, black truffle oil and edamame ($12), which tasted very much like a lean raw beef salad. The edamame offered a bit of pleasant sweetness to the dish, but the earthy truffle and bitter, vegetal arugula were both too strongly flavored to work with the raw emu slices. To solve this problem, HungryMan ate the emu first and then tucked into the salad after he had finished with the bird. My own beet and arugula salad with goat cheese and macadamia nuts ($8) was just fine, if a little too bland, and in the end it went mostly uneaten.

Pescatore’s New Zealand green-lipped mussels (pictured on Flickr, $12) were quite a bit better–served in a spicy tomato poaching broth, these little bivalves were meaty and tender, and not a bit overcooked. We also loved how their natural iodine and brine flavors worked well with the piquant saucing. I expected a similar level of spicy heat in Schnicksy’s deep fried prawn dumplings ($8), but was surprised to find them a bit underseasoned. Strangely, the shrimp used in the gorgeous little tawny dough packets was pulverized into a thick paste, with no visible sign of a shrimp tail anywhere. Grinding prawns into a mash allows more meat to be packed into a dumpling, certainly, but the table’s consensus was that we would have all preferred chopped or whole shrimps, rather than the gummy filling we found inside each of the bundles. On the other hand, we did genuinely enjoy the attempt to integrate Asian flavors and techniques into the dish.

This theme emerged once again in Schnicksy’s lemon myrtle grilled tuna steak on a seaweed salad ($19), although here it was an outright success. The tuna was seared exactly as requested, and the light and saline combination of soba noodles with two types of seaweed was an excellent textural contrast to the fish. Overall, this was probably the best dish we ate all night. It was certainly more cohesive and better executed than Pescatore’s rack of lamb with creamy mashed potatoes (pictured on Flickr, $27), which HungryMan described as ’shockingly oversauced with an overly acidic jus.’ We were also puzzled by the superfluous–and rather tough–greens on the plate; they seemed to be a hurried afterthought and out of character with the rest of the dish.

Similarly, neither HungryMan’s nor my own exotic main dish quite lived up to our expectations. Perhaps the long voyage overseas leeched away some of what makes these foods so special in their native context. No matter the cause, my crispy baked barramundi with couscous and sweet chili pesto ($22) was uninspiring and uninspired. No element of the dish was better than merely satisfactory–the pesto was bland, the couscous a bit sticky, and the fish that I had been looking forward to eating all night was just a limp, slightly rubbery fillet with no real distinguishing features. With such exciting ingredients, it seems a real shame to have turned them into something so dull–the whole dish reminded me of a silent meal of perch I ate in a university dining hall in Paris several years ago, except that the fish I ate then was much better than this barramundi.

The kangaroo fillet ($23), on the other hand, did manage to clearly identify itself as an unusual piece of meat, with its flinty, nose-filling mineral overtones and identifiable gaminess. But it ought to have been served on its own, with a simpler sauce and accompaniments, rather than mounded next to an overflowing reservoir of what we could only describe as sweet mushroom gravy. Had the kangaroo been served drizzled with olive oil–or even better, wattleseed extract–and served with the mashed potatoes from the rack of lamb, this might have been an excellent dish. We also could not help but wonder how much of Eight Mile Creek’s too-generous saucing was done intentionally, in hopes of covering up the inevitable fact that exotic meats and fish need to be imported–if not from Australia or New Zealand, then from a domestic supplier, and probably not one anywhere near here.

Desserts, on the other hand, tend to be easy to re-create in almost any kitchen, and in this regard, Eight Mile Creek managed an easy redemption for itself with a thick, luscious sticky date pudding (pictured on Flickr, $7). We were all also completely won over by the Lamingtons ($7): two slices of fairly dense sponge cake, soaked in thin chocolate icing (or syrup), and then rolled generously in flaked coconut, all served with a ramekin of clotted cream. Any prior culinary missteps were immediately forgiven with one bite of the Lamingtons, a dessert that Australians traditionally serve to new citizens after they take their oath of national allegiance. And in the end, this citizenship day treat is a perfect embodiment of what Eight Mile Creek does well–when the restaurant sticks with stereotypes, it is no better than decent, but when it focuses on embracing Australia’s immigrant heritage, infusing its cooking with techniques and flavors from Asia and the Mediterranean, it can be pretty great. So set out a plate of Lamingtons for the kitchen staff and start reading your Kylie Kwong, mates…it can only help.

Eight Mile Creek, 240 Mulberry Street (between Spring and Prince Streets), 212-431-4635.