I like the location. It’s where the Chinese restaurant used to be, overlooking the park. It has had a total re-fit and is adding life to the Barker Street scene.

If you’re up early and want breakfast, Gryphons is there seven days a week. If you’re up late (till midnight, anyway), Gryphons is there seven days a week.

On the bar side, Gryphons can be applauded for investing in the wonderful world of wine preserving, with a machine that stops oxidation in opened bottles, keeping high-end drops in top shape for some time. What it means is you can order many premium varieties by the glass. And with its attractive wine list on offer, Gryphons has an advantage here.

I’ve been twice and am trying to get my head around the service and quality of food. Perhaps I’ve just been unlucky, but I’ve yet to have a decent pizza at Gryphons (should I have to have luck on my side?).

On the first visit, the dough in my pizza wasn’t cooked, although hats off to the kitchen for immediately rectifying the problem. On the second visit, we waited a long time only to find that three of our four pizzas, served on slate plates, were cold.

The garlic seafood pizza was the piping-hot winner of the evening ($19 and $25). It was loaded with marinated prawns, calamari strips and scallops on a creamy mornay sauce. Great tastes and a memorable effort.

We figured you can’t go wrong with a supreme with peppers, mushrooms, onion, pepperoni, oven-roasted tomato, leg ham and olives (no pineapple, thanks – $18 and $24), but agreed we’d had much better, including in the inner south.

While excited about the funghi – a mixture of oyster, shitake and enoki mushrooms with Gorgonzola cheese and onion drizzled with porcini oil ($18 and $24) – we would have preferred the Gorgonzola to have been melted.

At Gryphons you order drinks and food at the bar, grab a number and a seat. Ordering was challenging and it seemed there was no system for serving those who were at the bar first.

Our wine glasses were far from sparkling clean, so we took fresh ones from the dishwasher tray on the bar.

I want to like Gryphons; I really do. And I want it to be a place I’d visit often, but so far no luck.

16 Barker Street, Griffith shops, Griffith. Call 6260 8848. Open seven days, 7am-midnight.