Restaurant review: Pure South Dining

After 12 good years, this prominent, casual Melbourne diner has lavishly expanded and renovated. But is it better?

John Lethlean

2 min read

12:00AMFebruary 18, 2017

Looks smart: Pure South walks the line between corporate and on-trend. Picture: Jesse Marlow

They’ve renovated,” she says with a hint of understatement as we stroll down Southgate Avenue towards Melbourne’s much-maligned brown river. On a prominent corner of the tourist-infected Southbank, Pure South, after more than 12 years, is a restaurant known to most simply because of the sheer amount of passing traffic. Change is a subject for comment.

Yep, they’ve renovated. With a wrecking ball and jackhammers, totally rebuilding, more than doubling the floor space, going up, out. Going from being a modest restaurant with a focus on Tasmanian produce to a stylish concrete and timber behemoth in just eight months. Amazing.

Once a dining room, terrace and outdoor bar, the new iteration works to that familiar theme of all-day cafe/snacker downstairs and smarter dining space upstairs. It looks smart: quality timber furniture, ground aggregate floors, smart pendant lights, huge open kitchen, horizontal bi-fold windows that open to the sky and the city. The room is cleverly broken up into different zones. Design-wise, and in the kitchen, PS walks a smart line between corporate safety and on-trend ideas.

I have a few suggestions, however, and they relate to growing pains. Tonight, at least, the dining room floor is awash with deck hands but no skipper; the place badly needs an anchoring presence to manage, schmooze and oversee. Without, it feels solid, but not special. And while this is almost certainly the mainland’s best and most dynamic list of Taswegian wine, the by-the-glass offer is too limited; there’s little aspirational on offer. That aside, Pure South’s contemporary bistro food, with its focus on Tassie produce, swerves a bit. Some things are outstanding; some less so.

Squid ink lavosh “tacos” are filled with ocean trout rillettes and trout roe arced up with some spicy/limey avocado puree. A fancy little canapé. Tempura squid – impossibly light and delicate – is teamed with texturally fascinating shaved squid, like a deep sea granita, and a deep green herbal tartare “emulsion”. If only it stopped then: there is nothing right about cooked avocado.

No caveats for a combination of seared scallops, oyster, clams, poached mussels and exotic mushrooms: a light mushroom broth is added at the table, bringing a wonderful sweet/nutty olfactory hit leavened by tannic, briny notes from a variety of sea succulents. Loved it.

An outstanding piece of King Island Scotch fillet is expertly chargrilled and served with “house made polenta” (in reality an intense, reduced corn puree), chargrilled spring onions and a light beefy jus. All good. But the garnish of sauteed diced tongue and tomato is unnecessary. Awful, actually.

Beautiful pan-roasted hapuku – again, cooked expertly – comes with a medley of different zucchini done different ways and a light, pleasant-enough bonito butter sauce. It’s OK.

Desserts here are special, if conservative. Pyengana Dairy buttermilk is used in an outstanding vanilla-speckled pannacotta with lemon crumble and faultless blackberries, while a deconstructed citrus cheesecake (pictured) – wonderful mascarpone, yuzu curd, Burlington Farm raspberries and buttery, biscuity wafers – shows lightness, soothing textures, penetrating flavours and brilliant fruit.

But is it enough? Pure South is now hustling in the big league. Its adherence to the Tassie mission statement is admirable, and rewarding for customers. But refinement is required. There’s still lots of potential to be exploited.