What’s up with the Prince Dining Room? The light in this joint is amazing. It’s easily one of the nicest rooms in St Kilda, if not Melbourne. And now there’s a hot new culinary director from Sydney, the much-celebrated chef Mitch Orr.

And yet? The place is mostly empty, at least during the week. On weekend nights, the main dining room – with its historic bones, curved velvet booths, rock ‘n’ roll photographs – has a steady stream of diners, though it’s hardly packed. And even at 7pm on a Friday, the stylish front bar is devoid of customers. (Which is a shame because a strong point of the venue is its fantastic cocktail list, overseen by bar manager Paul Beresford.)

It may be that the cheaper, more casual offering downstairs in the main part of the pub is good enough for most diners. It may be that the string of revamps and a recent change in ownership (Australian Venue Co. took over in June, a month after reopening with Orr in place) has locals confused. Or it may be that the food offering has all the signifiers of a trendy, modern Australian menu, but the kitchen struggles with execution.

Orr visits from Sydney regularly, and day-to-day operations are carried out by head chef Ben Parkinson. This is food that is beautifully plated, creative, and perfectly calibrated to the tastes of the moment. There’s lots of raw fish, plenty of fun vegies, and a selection of proteins cooked over fire that will satisfy most needs.

But over multiple visits, I find issues of technique and flavour that mar Orr and Parkinson’s attempts to give the people what they want. Fire-kissed (and otherwise raw) bonito ($30) would be a delight, served with hearts of palm and pomelo, but the skin and bloodline of the fish are so prominent flavour and texture-wise that it ruins the dish. A daily crudo plate ($36) features a generous serving of three different types of raw fish served with capers and olive brine, but while the kingfish and scallops were supple and silken, the tuna was a mess of clumsy knifework and chewy sinew.

Celeriac confit with chestnut puree, coffee, and a crown of shaved fennel ($20) was served completely cold in the centre. On the other hand, a grilled John dory with smoked potato and brown butter ($60) was seriously overcooked.

There’s something else about the food here that had me truly baffled, which is that much of it tasted as though it contained a wild amount of MSG. Enough to make your mouth tingle, and to give every dish a kind of explosive flavour-bomb sameness that works (kind of) for one bite but becomes truly overwhelming over the course of a meal.

A skewer of duck hearts ($16) topped with lardo tasted almost too salty but also a little like curing salt, and I wondered for a minute if they were lightly cured. But a second bite made me realise that, no, the thing that was overpowering was likely some form of MSG, which is itself a kind of salt.

Orr tells me that while they don’t use processed MSG, they “use kombu sheets and dried mushrooms in our stocks and sauces to help provide base levels of umami”, and “also use seasonings such as shio kombu, shiro dashi, white soy, fish sauce, garums, misos and kombu tea to boost umami where it makes sense”.

Many of these ingredients – kombu in particular – contain high levels of natural MSG, and it’s likely why plate after plate had the same strange quality, like the food was more than the food and also not quite the food it appeared to be. A pasta special, malfaldine with ragu ($36), had very little actual meat but tasted outrageously meaty, an odd tingle following every bite. The vegetable dishes tasted not quite like vegetables, but also like hyper vegetables.

I am not anti-MSG, by any stretch. I use it (and condiments containing it) occasionally in my cooking. I know it can be a useful tool in the professional kitchen. I’ve never before felt that my food had an overabundance of umami – the idea seems laughable. But here, the relentlessness of pure umami creates a kind of monotony that’s hard to ignore.

It’s too bad because some of these dishes are truly exciting, or would be if not for the distraction. That confit celeriac is one of the most creative vegetable presentations I’ve seen recently, its chestnut and coffee accompaniment riding the line between sweet and savoury, the texture of the celeriac soft and juicy. But it, too, tasted enhanced in a way that seemed odd. The plates that lacked this version of over-seasoning were the best by far: a montage of goat’s curd and witlof with juicy, thinly sliced nashi pear ($24) and a fantastic dessert of coconut rice cream over crunchy caramelised white chocolate ($18) that stole the night.

Overall, the problems at this new version of the Prince have to do more with execution than conception, which is certainly a potential issue when relying heavily on the talents of someone who is mostly absent.

The room is great, the drinks are great, the service is great. And with a few tweaks, some attention to detail, and a touch of constraint, the food has the potential to be great, too.