St Hotel

We all know the drill by now: a once sleazy nightclub gets a makeover and becomes an eating/drinking playhouse, with a result that's loved by locals, confronting to ex-patrons (some things you just can't un-see), and often difficult to categorise. So it is with St Hotel, which used to be the not-always-holy Saint nightclub in St Kilda and is now a Thai restaurant. Slash public bar. Slash late-night-supper-club. 

This multipurpose behemoth is the work of Paul Nguyen and Simon Blacher – the team who brought you Saigon Sally, Hanoi Hannah and freshly minted Tokyo Tina. This is another very pretty place full of good-looking people with big tubs of Moet on the bar and the kind of cruisy house beats even Shazaam can't decipher. They may score zip for concept originality (cue placemat menus, nude bulbs, soaring scraped brick walls, neon sign that says "bite me") but they do win the prize for getting as far up St Kilda's alley as you could get.

Chef Sean Judd, fresh from the kitchens of Chin Chin, has also skipped over some of the more predictable dishes, and updated others well. He gives betel leaves a subtle smoky shake-up with flaked smoked trout, pairing it with pomelo and roasted coconut. It works. There's also a massive bowl of wok-fried blue swimmer crabs worth coming back for on their own. The crustaceans are cleaved into quarters and lifted with a nutty, vaguely hot curry powder that tastes a little like satay, made extra fragrant by Thai basil and threads of kaffir lime leaf. Smash and drag the sweet flesh through the sauce. It's easily the best thing on the menu.

You'll notice a shift from day to night. At lunch, light buckets in through the skylight on to a vertical garden and multicoloured bistro chairs, all filled with local workers eating gluten-free salt and pepper squid and drinking jugs of Sapporo. It's bright, breezy and surprisingly calm. After 6pm it's a scene. The kind where you might score unsolicited tickets to the bun show courtesy of booty shorts and learn the finer points of (drinking at the) polo in the toilets. 

We start the night in the front bar, bathing in the glow of a fuchsia pantsuit. The drinks list here is lengthy but oddly limited flavour-wise. The dozen taps all pour crisp, light beers (there's not much between Dos Blockos Pale, Cricketers Arms and internationals such as like Sapporo, Kronenberg, Asahi and Tiger). The tomato consommé spiked with Sriracha and soy sauce is excellent, hard booze-wise, but if you like an aperitif that's not sweet or spicy breakfast, you'll have to go off list (they'll happily make a whisky sour – which is good) or upstairs where classics rule. Or you could just go straight for the jugular of the wine list which peppers its $50 local options with bottles of 2012 Mount Langi Ghiran shiraz and vintage Krug for $720. 

It's a list that shows their desire to please as many people as possible. As does a menu where (g) denotes the presence, rather than absence of gluten. Both salt and pepper calamari and another crab dish, soft shells this time, are coated in tapioca flour before hitting the friers, giving them an ultra light and bubbly jacket that's almost chewy. A nicely fishy nam jim talay brings the slightly bland calamari into balance. The green mango salad supporting the crab doesn't do as well. It's aggressively sour, like it's doused with pure lime juice, and studded with thick-skinned chunks of raw Thai eggplant. (It's meant to be raw, it's just hard work.)

Eggplant proves problematic. It's the smoky base for a salad that's like baba ghanoush meets som tum topped with a soft-centred egg. This whole dish is a bit of a textural wash: cold and smooshy. Pea eggplants are undercooked accents in a duck curry that is otherwise a really rich win, served with a sweet, lightly vinegary achar pickle flecked with pineapple, cucumber and fresh chilli to cut the salt. 

This is easy-eating Thai. You'll find no hellfire here, spice and pungency fans. Judd's sweet-and-mild pumpkin and jackfruit curry can best be described as relaxing. It smells like sandalwood incense smouldering in a sauna and eating it spooned over sticky, rich coconut rice is almost soporific. But you know what? It's exactly what you want post-Espy gig. 

St Hotel may not be a cross-town dining destination in the same way Abbotsford's Jinda Thai is for its boat noodles. Service is fine, and friendly, but doesn't always extend beyond order taking and dish delivery. But it's buzzy, beautiful, and perfectly plugging a big hole in the St Kilda scene. Just save your trip for the next time you're seaside-bound, sunnies armed and looking to play as much as refuel. 

THE LOW-DOWN
Pro tip Get post-midnight oysters and cured meats on the rooftop
Status Walk, don't run
Go to dish Wok-fried blue swimmer crabs with curry, green onions and Thai basil ($24)

How we score
Of 20 points, 10 are awarded for food, five for service, three for ambience, two for wow factor.  
12 Reasonable 13 Solid and satisfactory 14 Good 15Very good 16 Seriously good 17 Great 18 Excellent 19Outstanding 20 The best of the best