Griffs Wine Pub

Score: 13/20

Here's a new term to add to your modern person's lexicon: wine pub. I hadn't heard it before last week. But as I chatted with a wine man of insight, the phrase just popped out of his mouth. And I knew exactly what he meant.

Not a former pub trying to cast off the shackles of history like a Botanical or Argo; such places are pubs only in the eyes of Licensing Victoria, really. But a pub happy in its heritage skin, its old-fashioned front bar/back dining room layout, and one hoping to attract wine enthusiasts as a point of difference.

Griffs is a wine pub. I haven't eaten or had a drink in the front bar, where the owner's dog - Griff - looks down on the proceedings from a wall above a fireplace, a magnificent canvas that would be eligible for a canine Archibald, were there such an award. But the same wine list that applies to the dining room is on offer in the renovated front bar and it's a collection of contemporary, mostly Anzac wines of great interest at very fair prices. They are wines people talk about.

Moreover, a really strong selection of them - 44 to be precise - is offered by the glass. As we all know, it's one thing to offer, another to serve it in good condition. When we ate our lonely little meal in the back dining room, I ordered three consecutive glasses and they opened three consecutive bottles. The wines were good.

And they poured the stuff into very high quality, thin-rimmed glasses each time, as they should. I doubt they made much profit on us but I went away thinking: here's a great place for wine lovers.

Take, for example, the entry level Jacquesson champagne - the Cuvee 731 - a wine that wine people rate as a quality non-vintage (and one my wife likes on significant wedding anniversaries). Depending on whether they're getting any kind of discount from the wholesaler, which often happens when a wine is "poured" (or sold by the glass), the restaurant pays $59.12 for the bottle. They sell it for $85. But $8.50 of that sale price is sent to the nasty man in Canberra as GST.

So they actually only make $17.38 when they sell it. It's a bargain and one repeated across the spectrum at Griffs. Do the same exercise on the Balnaves 2004 cabernet sauvignon, from Coonawarra, a wine from the company James Halliday has just nominated as his winery of the year in the 2008 edition of his annual Companion. It costs the wine pub $21.29 (unless discounted for pouring); they sell it for $45. That's $19.21 to contribute to costs and - if there's any left over - profit.

Fancy a bottle of the same wine down at Nobu? Try $70.

If the hallmark of a wine pub is the encouragement to drink well, and not be ripped off, this place has it in spades.

I was a little less enamoured of the dining experience overall.

The dining room, with its separate entrance, is a thorough restoration of a 1920s rebuild, which happened after a fire. There were lots of fires in pubs in the old days. Huge leadlight windows are ornate but uncoloured; the floors are polished narrow-gauge hardwood. A fireplace dominates one end of the room; the ceilings are an elaborate box-beam design with a series of ornate mouldings.

Each table is handsomely set in classical manner, with white linen and all the trimmings, including fine bread from Wild Flour and a constant supply of water. But we were alone. Kind of weird.

Griffs has been open just seven weeks. The chef is the splendidly named Kestrel Urban; his short and rather interesting menu might loosely be called modern bistro; apparently he has been briefed to cook, where possible, with wine, and his background in Margaret River winery restaurants seems suited to the challenge. But if there was a theme to the food, it was of slightly excessive sweetness to a few dishes.

A handsomely presented, broad-rimmed dish of pumpkin and candied ginger soup ($9) got away with it; the liquid had great flavour and texture and a crunchy "salsa" of mint and toasted almonds at the centre put it into perspective. With that Wild Flour sourdough, a great success.

But it showed to less advantage with a globe artichoke dish ($12) in which white wine and saffron had been used to braise the vegetable and its support cast of cauliflower, leek and carrot. To serve, the long-stemmed artichoke halves had been layered with a coarse sourdough/herb crumb and grilled for crunch but the braising liquid beneath it retained too much sugar to be truly riveting.

"Pot roast saltbush lamb, minted pilaf, black sherry sauce $32" held promise. Indeed, the cylinder of rolled meat had been cooked to give it the gelatinous, rendered-fat outer texture of a pig's foot. I found the flesh it revealed to be less charismatic but pleasant enough.

The name saltbush lamb created expectations of delicious, assertive aromas that weren't there underneath some subtle spicing. The long-grain pilaf, with fresh broad beans, was enjoyable and the light and juicy black sherry sauce, with strands of dark onion through it, superb. Why the chef crowned this with a quenelle of sweet yoghurt is anybody's guess but it was a bad call.

Unfortunately, the "roast corn fed chicken breast" on the bone with potatoes crushed with spring onion, cider sauce and caramelised apple segments, topped with a frisee and radish salad ($26) was uninspiring. The meat was "powdery" in texture and mouthfeel, an unfortunate result, and it didn't have a lot of flavour. I'd try a different supplier; the dish itself is fine.

Fortunately, desserts work at a number of levels. A vanilla-poached pear with a biscuit tutu around its waist, on a sort of cold white chocolate pudding surrounded by a pretty quince syrup, looked as good as it ate - and at $12 represented good value for money: a lovely, seasonally sensible dessert.

Our waiter went hard on the Valrhona dark chocolate pudding recommendation ($12), and with its soft centre, blood orange marmalade and King Island double cream lid, with an orange caramel on the plate, it was a pretty decent example of a rather ubiquitous genre.

No fewer than three dessert-style wines - a late-harvest semillon from the Barossa, an iced riesling from southern Tasmania and a late harvest pinot gris from the Yarra Valley, are offered by the glass.

There's an unpretentious feel about the place and its personnel that some will find unfashionable but I find welcoming and relaxing.

Griffs is a wine pub. It's on its way to being a wine and food pub. Is that a gastropub? Who knows, but if you like wine, go down there and make up your own mind about the tucker. The wine offer's a no-brainer.

Score: 19: Unacceptable. 1011: Just OK, some shortcomings. 12: Fair. 13:Getting there. 14: Recommended. 15: Good. 16: Really good. 17: Truly excellent. 18: Outstanding. 1920: Approaching perfection, Victoria's best.