Seven years spent working in Mexico City – including at internationally regarded fine diner Quintonil – led Australian chef Ross McCombe to his latest gig, heading up the kitchen at Southbank’s new Hacienda Cocina Mexicana, right on the Yarra River.

McCombe says the menu is fairly a traditional Mexican one, but not entirely.

One non-negotiable was making tortillas in-house, using maize that has undergone the ancient process of nixtamalisation, which involves soaking dried corn kernels in an alkaline solution.

They’re served as-is, alongside all Hacienda’s larger dishes – such as Western Plains pork with a complex mole sauce, made here with peanut, and apple pico de gallo – but also in more tongue-in-cheek forms. A tostada-esque snack called “Old El Paso” riffs on the Tex-Mex brand’s hard-shell tacos: Hacienda’s house-made version is filled with tuna tartare, and smoked tomato and chipotle foam.

For early birds, a dedicated Mexican-inspired breakfast menu (with coffee) is available from 7am. Find pies stuffed with cochinita pibil, or Yucatan-style pork, and sausage rolls spiced with burnt habanero paste and fermented tomato ketchup. And birria comes as a stew – not the more recently popularised taco – with a grilled cheese sandwich.

“[Mexico City] is one of the best cities in the world for bars,” says McCombe, who’s recruited consultant bar manager Ramon Tovar – co-owner of Mexico City bars Long Story Short and Nardo Cocktail Club – to shake up Hacienda’s cocktail program.

The sweet cashew mole used in McCombe’s clay-baked beetroot dish is infused with whisky to make the Old Fashioned new again, and house-brewed tepache, a Mexican drink made with fermented pineapple peels, stars in the extra-refreshing gin sour.

Owned and operated by Highgate One Group (Richmond’s Ella, Hawthorn’s Osteria 20), Hacienda has taken over the former Tutto Bene site at Southgate, now moodier with splashes of marble and timber, and neon-framed Mexican sculptures. And there are plans to add a “big old oyster and ceviche bar” on the balcony, like Mexico City seafood hotspot La Docena.

Open daily 7am-late

M28, 3 Southgate Avenue, Southbank, haciendamelbourne.com.au