You want hot? We've got hot. We're talking a beach-abutting, dumpling-serving, cocktail-slinging, vaguely games-themed restaurant boasting an unobstructed view of the Spirit of Tasmania. Nothing is hotter in this neck of Port Melbourne, as you'll quickly discover when you show up at Tenpin without booking, even on an evening so quiet that you can hear the ferry easing out to sea.

This breezy new eatery is brought to you by the team behind Mr Lawrence, the Middle Eastern restaurant in a pub down the road. This time, owners Lyndal Barnes, Nick Savage, Matt Thurley and chef Ashley Richey have pulled the focus further south, and although on paper all this reads like yet another box-ticking proposition – here's your catch-all menu juxtaposing edamame with green curry, and you guessed correctly that there's a long list of stick drinks – it would be a mistake to approach with your expectations set to 2015 cliches.

It would be understandable, though. The explosive hipsterfication of south-east Asian cuisine that followed Chin Chin, knocking the city sideways, has meant we've ploughed through some average homages to our neighbours up north. So many sugary, salty dish riffs amid fitouts that range from slightly tacky to blatantly offensive.

In a lot of ways, Tenpin sidesteps those faux pas. Intentionally? It's unclear, but aside from an '80s video game graphic featuring a monkey and a ragey broad with a sword, it's otherwise beachy clean, a dining hall set-up of high stools with gold felt banquettes along the side for those who need back support.

Upstairs, overflow seating looks out to the bay, while decorative features amount to that big bowling pin and a fire hose, resplendent against a patchwork section of exposed brick.

Cocktails are doubly refreshing for their sharp use of bright, sour ingredients (the excellent case in point being the bracing and biting herbal and heated jalapeno-infused pisco, lime and peppery gin highball dressed with crushed coriander seeds) and for not calling it something like "me love you long time".

Is Richey's cooking the fierce and pungent stuff of, say, Jinda Thai in Abbotsford? It is not, but the ex-head chef of Chin Chin and Mecca Bah knows how to make you double dip without leaving you in fear of 3am desert mouth.

The dish of Portarlington mussels has an instantly addictive quality you might associate with something that been dunked in pure MSG, but that's not what grabs or holds you until the bottom of the bowl. It's the sweet, salty and sour alignment of a perfectly balanced mix of chilli jam, chicken stock and oyster sauce fried with Thai basil, kaffir leaves and just the right amount of lime juice.

Duck larb​ scores highest on the Scoville scale. The combination of fresh and roasted chillies gives the salad of minced duck, raw onion and lemongrass, textured with roasted rice, a frontal attack and slow burn heat that lingers. It is eaten like a taco in iceberg leaves with cucumber.

Grilled and sliced wagyu skirt steak is less melty and fatty than you'd expect, more iron-rich, which works well in contrast with a sweet and salty dressing and another lip-numbing papaya salad that you might call a shrimpless som tum. Is the pad Thai exciting? Is it ever! You'll order the smoky egg-strewn noodles anyway, without regrets.

Sure they roll out the redundant "this menu is designed for sharing" chat, and misses are scattered throughout. The pork dumplings on a kim-chi base are underseasoned, dry and doughy on one visit, and the roasted rice on your duck larb can make the dish a little gritty overall.

But I also challenge you to take a dive into the elegantly fragrant, and just-spicy-enough-to-make-lager-a-solid-decision green curry filled with blue-eye and snake beans and not see the virtue in a place that lets you climb off your cultural high horse for a little while and roll with it.

Tenpin is not authentic or original, but it's a good, tasty time on a plate in an environment that won't make you feel complicit in cultural tone deafness. That's hot.

THE LOWDOWN
Pro tip: Beeline just for the bar. The cocktails are sound and the views immense.
Go-to dish: You won't drink the Port Arlington mussel liquor if you have dignity.
Like this? Easy Tiger, 96 Smith Street, Collingwood, is a longstanding advocate of modern Thai without the tropes.

Correction: Tenpin chef Ashley Richey has not worked at Jinda Thai.