Roxborough

Grilled, pickled and shaved zucchini.

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88 Acland Street, St Kilda, 9537 0001

My score: 4/5

If there’s one word that describes Roxborough, it’s ‘open’. I don’t mean that it’s newly open, though it is that (just before Christmas), nor am I referring to its position on Acland Street, itself reopened after a dusty refurb (nice plaza but we need shade, please). I’m not even focusing on the fact that Roxborough is open all day, serving food from noon till late. What I really want to highlight is the open feel of the place, both physically and – um, am I over-reaching? – spiritually.

The whole frontage of the restaurant opens to Acland Street with dog-friendly footpath tables and views to the timber struts of the Scenic Railway. It’s in the same building that houses the marvellous Memo Music Hall (and with shared toilets, which may offer extra local colour). Roxborough is an easy, breezy restaurant, and the open kitchen underlines an open-armed approach to eating and drinking.

Chef Paul Jewson and restaurant manager Gian Marco Pugnaloni, also proprietors of Fitzrovia on Fitzroy Street, live partway between the two restaurants and strolling distance from both. Their motivation for the second restaurant is simple: they wished they could walk their whippets to a restaurant just like the one they’ve created, a relaxed place for lunch, dinner or snacks in between, somewhere the food is thoughtful but simple, celebratory without being fiddly. With chef and business partner Christian Byrne, they turned a sad site into the kind of place that the revivified Acland Street deserves, not a place for Sunday tourists, though hopefully they’ll like it too, but a home away from home for long-neglected locals.

The menu is broadly European with a pick-and-mix banquet vibe. Snack on cool pucks of lime-cured watermelon with creamy goat’s cheese and olive oil – they’re like a cold compress for your insides. Play it oh-so-Continental with pickled herring on yeasty brown bread. Dive into a salty, punchy tumble of clams and pippies with shredded ham hock. Get gooey and indulgent by piling molten mozzarella and guanciale (cured pork cheek) over charred bread.

There’s a whole lot of love for seasonal vegetables. Zucchinis appear in various states of dishevelment – grilled, pickled, raw – in a colourful courgette stacks-on that also includes broad beans and pistachio. Asparagus is grilled, caressed with burnt butter and scattered with grated, cured egg yolk. Radishes and mustard leaves are the flavour base for a salad of pearl barley and salted cod topped with smoked labne. The ingredients are honest and the contrasting tones nicely judged, all served up with a convivial professionalism. The wine list is similarly approachable and appealingly priced.

Jewson can do fancy – he catered for the Queen’s Christmas parties during 20 years in London – but it’s his time at the produce-focused River Cafe that he’s channeling here. There’s an engagement with nature and the neighbourhood, and a dialogue with diners that’s open-hearted, pleasure-seeking and entirely delicious.

See their website.

More St Kilda:

Pontoon, 30 Jacka Boulevard, St Kilda, 9525 5555.
This agglomerate dining machine, party venue and seaside bar is the buzziest and busiest bit of the Stokehouse precinct. Grab a table, order at the bar (maybe lamb cigars, charred octopus, and eggplant pizza) and get chowing.

Cicciolina, 130 Acland Street, St Kilda, 9525 3333.
Feeding St Kilda with care and sass since 1993, Cicciolina has seen it all. Famously bookings-free for dinner, the restaurant does accept lunch bookings. Post-weekend blues? Hit Cicc on Mondays for $20 beer and bolognaise.

Claypots, 213 Barkly Street, St Kilda, 9534 1282.
Constantly reinventing itself, Claypots is notable for using lesser loved fish and turning them into tasty and cheap seafood meals. There’s live music in the bar with its clever sail-swishing air-conditioning.

Monarch Cakes, 103 Acland Street, St Kilda, 9534 2972.
Acland Street is nothing like the European Jewish hub it used to be but Monarch still tastes old world. I can sometimes be found here with only a mini chocolate kooglhoupf and my own silent reverie for company.

First published in The Age, 15th January 2017.