New direction for Lume in South Melbourne a win for diners
Enlightening, exciting, expensive — fine diner Lume has always pushed the envelope. But now the South Melbourne favourite has changed course, and it’s a win for diners.
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The room remains one of Melbourne’s nicest spaces to eat in, an outback sunset of ochre and dusty pink, sandy grey and expansive adventure.
The indie-spiked playlist is still wilfully eclectic and wonderfully eccentric, the UV-lit loos are still stocked with beard oil, the multi-zero pieces of kitchen kit are still on show, and the artful ceramics and elegant accoutrements still herald a meal of ambition and finesse.
But the more things stay the same, the more things change.
And the biggest change is the most fundamental.
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Anyone who has eaten a meal at South Melbourne’s fantastical fine diner Lume since it opened in 2015 will know it to be many things — enlightening and exciting and expensive, sometimes infuriating, often challenging and divisive, but never boring.
But Shaun Quade has called time on his time on the pass, stepping back from the kitchen (and into a GM role) handing over to John Rivera, who represented our region in the prestigious world S.Pellegrino Young Chef of the Year competition. Drawing broadly on his Filipino heritage, Rivera has reimagined the menu, changing from the tricksy, what-you-see-isn’t-what-you-get molecular styles of Quade to a less prescriptive, shorter carte that even features a shared salad served with the final savoury course, a concept anathema in the Lume of old.
That’s not to say the menu, or cooking, has been dumbed down.
There’s still an extraordinary amount of detail that goes into each dish now served across three ($100), five ($140) or seven ($170) courses.
To wit: a BBQ pork skewer that takes pork belly cured in Tasmanian pepper berry, slow cooked, threaded onto a wooden skewer then smoked over charcoal. It’s glazed with “black banana ketchup” — fermented banana aged like black garlic — and topped with finger lime.
It’s a one-bite take on Filipino lechon (roasted pig) that’s a powerful palate call to arms at once clever and refined and completely delicious. Other bites to begin include a terrific tart of smoked and dehydrated tomatoes with bottarga custard that’s an explosion of salty, sharp creaminess; a toasted hemp seed cracker topped with smoky fennel and an onion doughnut filled with sea succulents. They form a great opening act that’s teamed with a complementary elixir of distilled mint and juniper that’s bright and summery and a properly hospitable gesture that sets the tone — usually a restaurant set with flutes is aimed at the upsell to begin. Not here.
Service as a whole from the Ilanit Bard-led team is calm and engaged but less drank-the-Kool-Aid than in past, and the kitchen has toned down the performative “yes chef” that jarred and marred my last visit. Oh, and they’ve also ditched the divisive full prepayment upon booking so Lume is now as user-friendly as they come.
And so you should. For Rivera’s cooking is exciting, precise and overwhelmingly enjoyable.
There’s a lovely bright freshness to a cucumber “soup” in which tender sweet slivers of Port Phillip calamari and toasted coconut shards are placed. That the vegetarian version simply subs the calamari for fresh coconut flesh is an artful sleight of hand, one of the many non-meat wins on that menu.
Another: King Edward potato, mashed, rolled into long ribbons, cooked confit and finally roasted, its texture like chewy velvet, a daub of Meyer lemon emulsion a burst of citric sunshine. The blue eye it replaces, however, is equally artfully treated and respectfully cooked, the fish skin crumb atop especially delicious.
The wine list is as worldly and well-crafted as it is eye-wateringly expensive with mark ups of more than 200 per cent not uncommon. Be warned.
But drink matches ($90 for five courses) are eclectic and considered, with the best pairing of the day a Japanese wheat beer served alongside translucent marron swimming in Peruvian tiger milk (the chilli-citrus marinade used to make ceviche), the fruity beer on hand to counter the ear-tingling heat.
Calamanisi — a citrus used extensively throughout Filipino cuisine — adds sticky sweetness to a shiitake broth of downy softness, but it’s the dual act of red currants and lap cheong that elevates the gravy served across dry aged duck — both breast and leg — to the stuff of dreams. But so, too, is the salty fruitiness of umebosi (salted plum) ketchup that seasons the chewy, gamy meat. Fresh blackberries nestled within that mixed leaf salad is similarly inspired, as is the Vegemite biscuit (like a breakfast-y chocolate crackle) that comes with the bill.
Lume is still edgy and experimental but now comes with added accessibility. It’s the type of restaurant gen Y can now bring their folks for a funky celebration, like a young couple did a few tables over, but where you can still wear 10K worth of Issey Miyake to lunch and feel at home.
It’s an exciting new chapter, a new direction. Lume is shining bright.
LUME. 16 OUT OF 20
226 Coventry St, South Melbourne
Phone: 9690 0185
Open: Tue-Sat dinner; Sat lunch
Go-to dish: Calamari cucumber soup
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