Score: 10/20

THROUGH rain spattered windscreen, the first thing we see from a distance is the lights; lurid, piercingly blue fairy lights, dangling like a luminous cobalt fly screen outside Tao's driveway, breaking up the night-time nothingness that is Bulleen Road.

It's an Oregon chalet-like structure that was, for nearly 15 years, Bamboo Terrace, but originally designed as some kind of Tyrolean restaurant folly in the 1960s. It's something of a local icon. Out here, restaurants have their own car parks - a nice touch - so dashing in the drizzle is but a short cardiovascular exercise that is over so fast we almost - but not quite - miss the very, very green synthetic grass at the front door. In we go.

Tao's offers itself to the dining public of Melbourne as the latest link in a small chain doing modern Pacific cuisine. There is Taiwan, Singapore and now Melbourne Tao's, according to the place-mat at our large, comfortable table. The menu is in two languages, English and Mandarin; the staff is all Asian.

But what, exactly, is the food? I've been there, and I'm still struggling.

Boldly, Tao's offers diners a set menu only: $38 for lunch and $48 at dinner, no a la carte, although the evidence of a table that arrives after us, has two courses and leaves, seems to contradict this.

The set menu consists of 10 items including beverages and the diner makes five decisions: salad, soup, main, dessert and finishing beverage, in that order.

Vacillating between such unlikely choices as cream of mushroom or creamy pumpkin (soups) and "Garden vinaigrette chicken" and "Hearts of Romaine" (salads), we make our selections, choose a bottle of pinot grigio from the small "Semillon/sauvignon blanc" bracket of wines (true) and wait for action. It doesn't take long.

The "aperitif" arrives, "Vintage fruit wine" in small liqueur glasses with cherries acting like a marble stopper on an old bottle (when it releases, the stuff comes spurting out). The vintage isn't listed.

Next is the mystery "Assorted chef's platter" and tonight, it's a smart, wavy platter with three items: a sweet and tanned set white/soft yolk hen's egg, jammed in a shot glass with several teaspoons of a sweet, soy-based liquid at the bottom (odd, but not unpleasant); a piece of salty smoked salmon in a spoon that might have come from Uri Geller's cutlery drawer (inside is cucumber, on top creme fraiche and red onion). The final element of this seemingly unconnected and incongruous trilogy is a small, tasteless cooked scallop (coral removed) with a mint leaf, three salmon eggs and a puddle of passionfruit liquid with the crunchy seeds pureed through it, creating the appearance of gritty - but more dentally challenging - vanilla specks. What was the chef thinking?

Salads.

One is a selection of decent sashimi: four different fishes (the usual suspects) in a bowl of ice with shredded daikon and carrot, curly parsley and a rather bizarre twig fence sprouting 10 centimetres above the bowl. It caused a bustle in our hedgerow, I can tell you.

The other is "fruit salad with passionfruit dressing". There is diced strawberry and mango scattered on a black square plate with "artistic" drizzles of more gritty passionfruit liquid and, bizarrely, since there is no mention of it on the menu, crab meat with the moulded cylinder of lettuce and fruit salad, crowned with a black speckled (yes, more passionfruit dressing) shelled prawn that tastes of exactly nothing.

Had the lights gone out and I'd eaten the lonely crustacean without gift of vision, I'd have said it had the shape and texture of a prawn with neither the smell nor taste.

How do they do that?

Next is a pleasant presentation of grilled mushroom; small buttons in a soy-based liquid at the bottom of a little pot and robust slices of bigger, less yielding "King Browns" drizzled with same sauce and parsley.

Soup.

One is a pleasant dashi-based Japanese-style broth in a teapot, which you pour into a tiny saucer. The other is a Korean-style broth with kimchi (mainly pickled cabbage), which is good, if rather more heavily laden with chilli and garlic than expected.

Sorbet.

Out comes a little conical (comical?) glass of vividly, wildly, impossibly green ice and liquid you would just have to call a lime granita. It's about that sweet, and about that palate-cleansing.

Mains.

One is "fresh fish of the day" (well you'd hope so): pan-fried pieces of unexceptional rockling, a peanut-based sauce, a lime wedge, half a cherry tomato and a golden, crumbed croquette of pureed pumpkin. The other is "sha-cha pork ribs", described (by the waitress) as a Taiwanese marinade before grilling; we get the same croquette, two whole chives and two halves of cherry tomato, artistically poised at one extremity of the rectangular plate, some thick soy-based sauce and a rack of meat that makes me feel like Fred Flintstone.

Flavour and texture-wise, the pork is nothing special.

"Special Fried Rice" is not, either; it's a pot of mushroomy fried rice with a touch of chicken and some shredded nori, and it's fine.

Dessert.

A creme brulee comes in a pot, on a fancy plate, with arty V-shaped squirts of liquid terminating in a tiny dice of fruit. The pudding has a thick toffeed shell and an ever-so-slightly curdled texture, but it's not bad. "Tai-Chi Pudding" is less benign; two small ceramic pots shaped to create Yin-Yang symbols when cuddled up to each other contain different pudding-like stuff set in the cold, cold fridge. One's white, the other dark.

What they have in common is that they are almost tasteless and have sesame seeds cooked into the mixture, for texture. Naturally, the Yin-Yang pots sit on a black plate scattered with icing sugar.

Beverage.

We finish with two small jugs of iced "tea": one is rose apple, the other summer peach. A refreshing, if unconventional, end to this tour of the Pacific. And a fitting end to our visit to Bulleen, too.

It's hard to imagine quite where Tao's fits into the rich landscape of Melbourne's restaurant opportunities. It is a kind of weird Asian/Western fusion, but not exactly. Only some of the food is tasteless; most of it is pleasantly innocuous, but contextually challenged.

Is there scope for a restaurant that - almost buffet-like - puts sashimi alongside mushroom soup alongside "hotstone sizzling steak" alongside fresh fruit with sago?

Apparently so.

Me, I was glad to see those lurid blue lights fade in the rear vision mirror. I'll take my Pacific tour one country at a time, thank you.

Score: 1-9: Unacceptable. 10-11: Just OK, some shortcomings. 12: Fair. 13: Getting there. 14: Recommended. 15: Good. 16: Really good. 17: Truly excellent. 18: Outstanding. 19-20: Approaching perfection, Victoria's best.