Just Open: Pretty Mama, Melbourne CBD

You've always thought the upper Spencer-Lonsdale Street district needed more rum and jerk chicken, and finally, some people with pedigree have answered the call.

Opening on Tuesday, February 16, Pretty Mama is a 100-seat Caribbean-themed and rum-fuelled resto-bar, located near the Kettle Black team's giant new cafe project, Higher Ground. It's the long-time-coming collaboration between Michael Cotter (Gumbo Kitchen food truck, Po' Boy Quarter), and bartender Shae Silvestro (ex Brooks, Der Raum).

It reads like a 1950s tiki restaurant with the looks of a club in Havana. The ceiling is wall-to-wall venetian shutters and the back bar is cobalt blue. The smell is all smoke from the Brazilian-style grill, fuelled by fragrant grape vines, apple and pepper woods, and operated by chef Clinton Gresham (ex Cobb Lane bakery). The real influence, however, is Bar Agricole in San Francisco, in that Pretty Mama will put food and cocktails on fairly equal footing.

Open for lunch and dinner, the idea is to order a half or whole jerk chicken (they're using free-range Milawa) or something else from the broadly Caribbean list (Tahitian lamb curry, say, or a version of rice and peas made with wild rice and broad beans, or plantain, squashed and double-fried like a potato cake) and pair it to either a Red Stripe beer, or Silvestro's twisted rum classics.

That might be his shake on a Pina Colada featuring ginger and grilled pineapple, or the romantically named "Banana", uniting banana distillate and the raw heat of rhum agricole. But for our money the opportunity to circle your index finger aloft and give the international sign for a round of daiquiris is too great to pass up.

Set sail for tiki times.

Open Tue-Thu noon-11pm; Fri-Sat noon-1am; Sun noon-5pm.

Watertank Way, 220 Spencer Street, Melbourne, 03 9034 4355, prettymama.com.au