Fitzroy isn’t short on restaurants, but a good hotel in the inner-city neighbourhood has been notably absent, until now. The StandardX – an offshoot of The Standard hotels known worldwide for their edgy design, parties and guests – opens on August 8. But how will its flagship restaurant, Bang, be received in an area teeming with great restaurants, from two-hatted to Tuesday-night-appropriate?

Its team, including chef Justin Dingle-Garciyya, believe Bang brings something different to Fitzroy.

“We value what other restaurants are doing out here, but we’re very different,” says Dingle-Garciyya.

“Although it’s a restaurant, you can come and have a drink and have some bites and there’ll be a DJ in the corner.”

Plates are Thai-influenced, Hecker Guthrie designed the warm and eclectic lobby-side dining room, and local makers are tightly woven into menus, in-room offerings and weekly specials. It’s the first of what The Standard’s owners hope will be many Bangs all around the world.

The banquet-style menu is made up of crab doughnuts, beef noodle soup with tendon and beef cheek, crab noodles in lobster bisque, and creme brulee shot through with Thai milk tea.

For a duck curry, a small slab of confit meat imbued with lemongrass and ginger sits in a pool of red curry sauce with coconut milk foam underneath to stir through. The duck’s skin is dried and turned into a galangal-turmeric crumb.

Dingle-Garciyya, a veteran hotel chef who’s worked in many luxury properties around the world, including in Thailand for four years, says the country’s night markets were his favourite places to eat.

Inspired by street-food stalls there and across South-East Asia, he’s put a pig’s head dish on the menu, which is presented dramatically on the bone before staff strip off the caramelised meat for diners to wrap in roti bread with spring onions and pickles.

Cocktails continue the tropical theme, such as the white rum, bourbon and chai combination of An Affair to Remember.

Instead of minibars in rooms, there’s a lobby shop stocked with everything from tubs of house-made ice-cream to longnecks of Melbourne Bitter, blocks of Hunted & Gathered chocolate, Fin wines from Yarra Valley and Industry Beans coffee (which previously occupied the site).

StandardX is going to be rolled out worldwide after the Fitzroy launch. Billed as a more low-key offshoot of Standard’s main line of hotels, which began in 1999 in West Hollywood, StandardX properties will be situated in neighbourhoods rather than city centres.

It’s a neat solution for what was a curly problem for the Melbourne location: The Standard already exists in Fitzroy (on the same street), trading as a pub for 159 years. The pub and hotel had to undergo mediation earlier this year, with the new name, StandardX, created in response.

In addition to Bang, the hotel houses The Loft, a lounge-like bar that connects to the restaurant, and a rooftop bar that’s accessible to guests only, opening later this year.

Bang is open from August 8: daily 11.30am-4.30pm, 5.30pm-10pm

62 Rose Street, Fitzroy, standardx.com/melbourne/