Nobu

Oh Nobu! Haven't we got ourselves into a lather? Just look at the list of owners, and the rumoured investment of $10 million by landlord Packer. Just look at the list of Nobu-related restaurants around the world (19 and climbing). Just think about this expensive salve for our cultural cringe, the first such eatery in the southern hemisphere. After all, it has been called the most influential restaurant of the new millennium, with hundreds of imitators.

This is a Significant Event.

But Nobu - the concept - started in America and much about Melbourne's has the pulsating, nightclub feel of a restaurant working to an "international" formula with US roots. Much about the place, from interior design, to food style, to systems and menu nomenclature has been imported. Branded.

You arrive at ground level, where the bar is pumping with pre-dinner drinkers and tyre kickers, to be greeted and escorted downstairs by a woman straight from the Addicted to Love casting call. The low-ceilinged basement is a warm collage of burnt reds, timbers, heavily grained tables, sugar-crusted floral wallpaper on the ceiling and lots of textural detail. The lighting is a study in getting it right.

The mood is informal; much like the wait staff. Each party is greeted by a collective "irasshai" - welcome - from the floor, an effort that seems to wane as the night goes on, like team chants at the football when your team is getting flogged.

The banquettes are too low for the tables, but a corner position affords a view of the action. Melburnians seem to recognise the flame of celebrity and have descended, moth-like, in the restaurant's second week. It's noisy, at times unpleasantly so. One table turns over three times to our single seating.

Staff deliver information in systematic, formulaic but professional manner, and service tables well; it adds up to a feeling that you're part of something successful, something you should want to be part of.

This is my first Nobu experience, but the man's influence precedes him; I love straight Japanese food and the Peruvian accents, for which he's famous, rarely subtract be they performed under Nobu's own roof or by those who have copied him.

But you'll find better straight Japanese elsewhere in Melbourne and similarly interpretative Japan-based food at plenty of places, often cheaper and in some cases better. And many of the wine mark-ups verge on naughty, although there are rare nuggets of value (a WA riesling at $45, for example, unlike a German example that yields them $54.85 on a price of $92). Unsurprisingly, much of the wine is imported.

The food varies considerably in value too. The beef tataki ($16.50) is a wonderful series of rare-grilled fillet dominoes, all fallen down and dressed with citrussy ponzu, minced onion and fried garlic flakes; it is a sublime combination. At the other end of the price scale, so too is that of the hot oyster ($9.50 each): fried quickly in a swaddling of kataifi pastry (called "filo" by the Nobu servers), this first-class mollusc is napped with a creamy wasabi mayo and a little caviar of some kind, to be put back in its shell on a nest of spinach and sliced mushroom in a dashi stock.

I was less impressed by octopus carpaccio served as a kind of salad of tentacle discs sprinkled with dried miso ($7.50). Despite the bean paste's interesting, crumble-crunch texture, it has an over-reduced, rich Vegemite-like intensity and saltiness that palls after a mouthful, dominating. The same ingredient, with the same intensity, mars a potentially superb salad of fresh artichoke, parmesan and yuzu, with a hint of truffle oil, on a layer of soft, room-temperature wheat noodle. Ingredients we like, but out of balance ($13.50).

Two much-copied Nobu signatures - dishes you'll find in all his restaurants - live up to the hype.

"New Style Sashimi" of whitefish and salmon ($21.50, you choose the combinations at different prices) sees a radial display of the alternating raw fish with minced garlic, ginger shreds and chive spears, white sesame seeds and yuzu dressing. It's finished with hot olive/sesame oil adding nuttiness, just taking the edge off the rawness. It's a well-deserved classic, a fabulous harmony of flavours.

Imported, Japan-sourced cod is the basis of the famous "black cod with miso" ($33). It's a fish rarely seen on Australian menus, but the principle here couldn't be simpler: a piece of fish marinated in a sweetened white miso/mirin paste for several days, baked, and served with a little of the marinade, lemon, and a stalk of hajikami, a sweet-pickled ginger shoot. You have to admire the restraint of it, the way the sweet-and-salty edges of the fish caramelise a little under heat, the lovely gelatinous skin and the finest of fine flakes of its pure white texture.

More imported seafood - I'm guessing Canadian - form the basis of scallop tiradito, another Nobu signature that brings in the Peruvian influence in a ceviche style. You get slices of cucumber topped with slices of large, raw scallop, each topped with a coriander leaf and a red splodge of rocoto - a type of chilli - paste. Acid comes via yuzu and lemon juice. This is a harmonious mating of Japan with South America. Local fresh live scallops would make an amazing - if expensive - alternative.

But Nobu lacks any sense of regional produce, in contrast to near neighbour Rockpool. Is it at odds with current Australian thinking?

A "wood oven" section offers mostly fish but "roasted whole poussin", served with a chilli/lemon/garlic sauce on a piece of plywood, has been recommended by a Nobu Melbourne early adopter. A marinated bird ($22.50) finished with that dipping sauce, chives and a nest of shredded, deep-fried taro, is served boned and sliced into chopstick portions.

Chocolate features on three of the seven dessert dishes; we're recommended the "Hot Chocolate Bento Box" ($15), a light choc baked cylindrical pudding with a soft centre and an orb of green tea ice-cream to the side, all in a lacquer-style box. Yawn.

A complimentary "digestive" based on sake blended with coconut, pineapple and passionfruit cannot be recommended. At all.

Nevertheless Nobu is fun; it's a place you go to be part of something buzzy and bright. Cherry-pick the menu and you will do well. Nobu veterans tell me Melbourne's is pretty much the same sort of experience you'll have at any other. It feels it. After all the hype and lather, I expected a little more sizzle. When it settles down, we might get it.