Restaurant review: Higher ground, Melbourne

This Melbourne eatery blurs the line between restaurant and cafe, but does this hybrid hit the mark?

HIGHER GROUND

The busiest restaurant in Melbourne today is actually a cafe. Or vice versa. (Stay with me, please.) All day long, people stream through the doors of Higher Ground at the crappier end of the city's traditional CBD seeking caffeine comfort, somewhere to kill a bit of time, out-of-office respite, a neutral zone for sensitive discussions. At weekends, I'm predicting brunch mayhem.

They all mutter "wow" as they arrive because it's that kind of a space: a huge, industrial shell with impossibly high ceilings, restored and fitted out at vast expense to provide zones on multiple levels.

With its steel, distressed brick, giant arched windows, lush trailing plants and oodles of natural light, it's a cathedral to modern life.

The people behind this place have an extraordinary track record in the food-focused cafe world, having started too many to count and retained a few en route. There is not a trend that goes by these guys. And in the Instagram world, places like this are highly influential.

Higher Ground began with its proprietors asking themselves a question: what would it take for a successful cafe to bleed into the territory of restaurant? To serve more ambitious food, wine, and service customers to a higher standard, right alongside those cafe foods and juices we're known for?

Why can't the customer having a glam bacon sandwich - or for that matter an upmarket version of porridge, with house-roasted coffee or superjuice - sit beside someone having steamed fish with black beans and noodles and a glass of wine?

With serious investment in the kitchen and service staff, HG goes closer to challenging preconceived ideas about food, service, beverages - everything, really - than any other place I can think of. Higher Ground is its own, egalitarian, thing. And the food is impressive, too.

From a single menu with the sub-heads "Day", "Extras", "Small plates" and "Sweets" you can navigate the shipping lanes of budget, personal preference and occasion with pinpoint accuracy.

And it's all next-level clean eating, a wellness blogger's wet dream.

Sweet, creamy almond hummus is served with a piquant cumin/ paprika/chilli moat of sauce and a mess of multiple seed wafers that just scream virtuous. Tablets of outstanding cured kingfish - firm, lively, flavoursome - get a Japanese treatment with a ponzu dressing, briny wakame and white sesame.

It's yet another clever iteration of the dish that ate a nation.

The hummus is back as the basis for a kale and cauliflower salad with avocado cheeks, puffed rice, salted seeds and a poached egg on top; it's clean and satisfying, a textural triumph.

"Charred and salted" Brussels sprouts are more steamed and pan-fried than anything else, a flourish of menu-ese perhaps.

But HG's version of a lightly spiced lamb sausage roll, like a big puffy/meaty escargot, is delicious, hearty and served with pickled cucumber slices and an anchovy aioli (pictured). Spot on.

We drank a bottle of organic Italian white incorrectly annotated on the wine list - not something I'd normally do in a "cafe". And we ate a couple of really good chocolate brownies, because that's what dessert consists of here. In that respect, HG is not quite a restaurant.

But really, who cares? I'll go back, and so should you. When you're not quite sure what you want, it's very satisfying to find a stylish, relaxed place that probably does.

AT A GLANCE

Address:

650 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne

Contact:

03 8899 6219 highergroundmelbourne.com.au

Hours:

Lunch Mon-Sat; Dinner Thu-Sat

Typical prices:

Smaller dishes $15; larger $26

Like this? Try ...

Sourced Grocer, Brisbane; Beaufort Local, Perth

Summary:

Keep on trying

* * * 1/2