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I never let summer go by without at least one fish and chips session on the beach. Requirements include a sea view, a squawking seagull soundtrack, and that familiar progression from exciting first crunch to final soggy mouthful. It’s as seasonal a marker as money bag dumplings for a lucky Lunar New Year or too much chocolate at Easter.

But in all honesty, I am ready for a menu shake up, lazy-day snacking that’s as easy to eat as a paper-wrapped package of steaming fish and spud but with a hint of luxury. I am ready for Claw & Tail, a kiosk in St Kilda that does fancy shellfish rolls, dressed oysters and scallops, prosciutto-wrapped prawns and spectacular gratineed, grilled lobsters.

The first Claw & Tail opened three years ago at Grazeland, the fun food park in Spotswood. A St Kilda outlet set sail last February in an old ice-cream kiosk at South Beach Reserve, between summer-ready institutions Republica and Stokehouse. It’s a simple set-up with picnic tables and benches on a small bricked plaza, and lawn and sand nearby where you can tear into your bounty.

A liquor licence is pending: champagne and lobster, yes, spicy prawn roll and beer, absolutely, though you’ll have to sip by the kiosk because the public areas are a dry zone.

Speaking of dry, Claw & Tail only works in fine weather. If steady rain rolls in, the shutters come down.

The gratineed, grilled lobster and the roll are both pure, uncomplicated pleasure.

Owners Rach and Chris Barlow moved from the UK eight years ago. He’s a chef with a passion for seafood, she’s a retail gun who managed Myer Bourke Street. Shifting from the biggest department store in the Southern Hemisphere to a tiny beach kiosk has been quite a transition but probably explains why Claw & Tail feels like a business that knows what it’s doing.

The food is high quality and built to please. Pacific oysters can be dressed with nam jim or caviar and finger lime, sweet scallops in the shell are a great base for spicy ’nduja and pine nut crumb, and tiger prawns are wrapped in prosciutto and grilled with garlicky herb butter.

Most people are here for lobster though: Canadian lobster morsels are dressed with Kewpie mayo and piled in a brioche roll.

If you want to push the boat out, West Australian half lobster is topped with truffled parmesan gratin and served with fries.

The local shellfish is more flavoursome than the North American but both dishes are pure, uncomplicated pleasure.

There’s also coffee and ice-cream – scoop me a blood orange sorbet, please – but the menu is tight overall, partly because there’s not much wiggle room, but also because people seem mighty happy with a few oysters, luxe lobster and a faceful of Port Phillip Bay.

I get it: this is a fish ‘n’ chip update that I can get my mouth around too.