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3/1-3 Carre Street, Elsternwick, 9077 8815
My score: 3.5/5
If summer means anything it means fish and chips but they too often entail grease overload and lingering self-loathing. Tommy Ruff makes it easy to avoid the oil and the ‘oh no’ with lighter, fresher options and an eat-in restaurant at takeaway prices. The owners are John and Helen Stamoulis, who have wrapped up about a million paper packets of steaming seafood and spud at South Melbourne institution Clarendon Fish and Chippers and Malvern’s Red Mullet (they no longer have a stake in either).
Their new place is a smart, appealing update on a favourite fast food, with a focus on grilled fish, generous serves and a gentle nudge towards more sustainable options. Fish of the day (dory, trevally or blue grenadier, perhaps) is tricked up in various ways: there’s Spanish styling with garlic, tomato and peppers, an Asian version with oyster sauce, ginger and spring onion and a Moroccan rendition, whereby fillets are rubbed with a vaguely north African spice paste and expertly grilled. Fish is served with either brown rice and steamed greens (love!) or salads, maybe Middle Eastern coleslaw or beans with haloumi. Daily specials reflect seasonal catches and popular cuisines like Mexican (fish tacos) and Thai (fried barramundi fillets with salad leaves, chilli, bean shoots and coriander). I wouldn’t call Tommy Ruff’s globetrotting flavours transporting but they’re decent gestures at international eating. It doesn’t stop there, anyway: there’s baked whole fish, mussel pots, oysters and skewered garlic prawns, which I would have devoured more eagerly if they’d been deveined. If seafood doesn’t suit, there are burgers and souvlaki – oh, and mostly homemade Greek biscuits and desserts.
Sometimes only the classics will do, so you can get pretty much everything battered and fried too. Calamari is coated with crunchy Japanese panko breadcrumbs, pineapple rings are battered to seal in their sweet-sour succulence and crunchy whitebait are served with aioli.
The design channels seaside boathouses with rope details, timber planking, fishing rod light fixtures and a mix of bright and bleached beachy colours. It’s an easy place to hang out, so long as you can get a table and don’t mind heading to the counter to order and pay. Otherwise, take away is easy and Elwood Beach is only five minutes away if you want to sit by the source.
See their website.
More seafood:
Rubira’s at Swallows, 192 Station Street, Port Melbourne, 9646 2746
Up to 10 daily fish are listed on the blackboard at this welcoming, comfortable restaurant. There’s always a vegetarian dish of the day for those not falling hook, line and sinker for seafood.
Hooked, 172 Chapel Street, Windsor, 9529 1075; 384 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, 9417 7740
Wooing southside and northside with tempura-battered fish, ace burgers, fish burritos and superfood salads, Hooked is a newfangled take on takeaway.
Pure South, River level, Southgate, Southbank, 9699 4600
The focus at this excellent Southbank restaurant is produce from Tasmania. In seafood terms, that means premium oysters, line-caught fish (maybe trumpeter) and mussels smoked in house.
First published in The Age, December 1, 2013.
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