Alt Pasta says hasta la vista, salt

It's a well-known theory that limitation is a useful tool when it comes to creativity. First-year film students are often restricted from using dialogue; and there's a legend that a bet among Ernest Hemmingway and friends that he could not write a story using only six words resulted in the devastating, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

Creative limitation is also something often used in the culinary world, most obviously with vegetarian and vegan cooking, but also locavorism and kosher or halal cooking, gluten-free baking and keto … the list goes on. These restrictions are usually for moral, religious or health purposes, but I've seen them spur delicious originality among talented chefs. What's less common is restriction purely for creative purposes.

That's what chef Mino Han is doing at Alt Pasta Bar, his new restaurant in the former Shik location on Niagara Lane in Melbourne's CBD. Not a lot has changed in this shadowy room, illuminated sparsely from behind its muted green banquettes. The walls are still brick, the seating is around a central U-shaped bar, which now serves as an open kitchen.

As the name suggests, this is far from a traditional Italian pasta operation, with elements of Japanese and modern Australian cookery and ingredients throughout the menu. But perhaps the most alternative thing Han is doing is eschewing salt altogether.

This is especially interesting given the fact that the pursuit of umami is perhaps the defining ethos of Han's cooking. But a clever chef – and this food is clever – knows that there are plenty of ways to extract flavour without turning to sodium, and also, there is plenty of sodium content in ingredients that aren't salt.

Did you know, for instance, that you can make natural salt out of celery, which contains about 30 milligrams of sodium in one fresh stalk? You might not be thinking about it as you consume Han's Hiramasa kingfish ($27.50), served raw in slices with a bright and fruity sauce made from fermented kumquat. But you'll also not miss the salt that isn't on the dish, thanks in large part to the small dice of celery under the fish, as well as the natural saline qualities of the small scoop of caviar on top.

For most of the pasta dishes, Han uses a heavily reduced chicken stock to bring that savoury umami to the forefront, although he needs other tricks for the vegetarian options.

For his risotto ($35.50), made with arborio rice cooked with shio koji and mushroom butter, the tang and depth of flavour is thanks to blue cheese, as well as daikon and wattle seed powder.

For his cacio e pepe ($29.50), the most classic pasta on the menu, cheese is also the culprit – the notoriously salty pecorino romano.

Han is making all of these pastas daily, including a black squid ink fettuccine ($38.50), which gets a hefty dose of spanner crab before being finished with a pastrami crumble. It's in this, as well as a pappardelle with abalone and seaweed ($38.50), that you can really see his vision shine.

There are places where I felt that the cart was put before the horse – in other words, the dish needed something that salt might provide, and the alternative didn't work nearly as well.

A wagyu ragu lasagne ($36.50), presented playfully as one big spiral on the plate rather than in layers, tasted heavily of truffle oil, which certainly maximised the dish's flavour but not in a way that did any justice to the overall experience of eating it.

And in its early days there's still something disjointed about the place, with service that is extremely friendly but slightly disorganised, and a wine list that's a bit too short and not incredibly well suited to the food.

But Han's experiment is a fun one, and the seafood pastas in particular make a good case for turning a thought experiment – how much flavour can you extract without using the one thing guaranteed to bring out flavour? – into a reality.

My guess is that the food will get even wilder in coming months, as this chef and his team figure out what really works, and how far diners are willing to go in terms of subverting their own expectations of what a pasta restaurant should be.

Vibe Moody laneway bistro

Go-to dish Squid ink fettuccine with spanner crab, $38.50

Drinks Creative cocktails, short Australian wine list

Cost About $140 for two, plus drinks