St Kilda's Pontoon becomes Stokehouse Pasta & Bar

It's not hard to tempt me with a meal and a sea view, but I'm an especially easy sell on downstairs at Stokehouse. Iconic but easygoing, it's a key Melbourne dining experience.

Life feels good and summer feels real while you're sipping on a spritz, swiping airy focaccia through bagna cauda (a whipped "warm bath" of garlic and anchovies) and eagerly anticipating king prawns tickled with spicy 'nduja salami.

The view is perfect, too, whether it's 35 degrees and blue sky, there's a portentous mustering of clouds, or a storm breaks and sea spray peppers the windows. (And, hey, this is Melbourne, so all those things may happen during the hour or three you sit here.)

This St Kilda Beach site was part of the bountiful lands of the Boonwurrung people for millennia. In 1908, the first tea rooms were built here and since New Year's Day 1990, it's been Stokehouse.

The current building opened in 2016 after a fire two years earlier razed the place. A huge investment in green credentials is mostly invisible. Food waste is "digested" on site, and heating and cooling is largely thanks to geothermal piping that extends 80 metres beneath the building.

Now as before, upstairs is the fancy bit, a place for lobster and ooh-la-la ladies' lunches.

This downstairs portion – once Stokehouse Cafe, more recently Pontoon – has been reframed as Stokehouse Pasta & Bar, an attempt by the van Haandel family owners to turn what had become a boisterous hangout into a more sedate restaurant. It's worked: the place is casual but not raucous with an effortless beach house feel.

Seafood is the natural skew. White anchovy, pickled chilli and green olives are speared with toothpicks to create gildas, a palate-tingling Basque snack.

A daily fish (fillet or whole fish for sharing) comes with pepperonata, a slippery stew of peppers.

There's joy for vegetarians, especially among the house-made pasta dishes: fusilli is tossed with tomato sugo, tortellini is filled with spinach and ricotta.

Chef Brendan Anderson works the wood-grill with aplomb: this is a great place to snag a steak, too.

Clever touches help the restaurant scrape by with fewer experienced staff. (Stokehouse has the advantage of recruiting backpackers directly from the beach: a manager told me that a "help wanted" sign prompted more applications in one hour than an online job ad had elicited in a month. Still, skills take time.)

One innovation is the offering of family sized pasta portions: large bowls of crab and chilli spaghetti or orecchiette with charred broccoli make a meal feel like a party while simplifying serving.

Another genius move is the one-page wine list where each of the 85 bottles costs $79. Food-friendly and organised by weight and style, you probably won't need to lean on a newbie staff member to explain anything in depth. Aficionados may spot wine bargains sprinkled through the list by canny, creative sommelier Wil Martin.

Like everything at Stokehouse Pasta & Bar, it's easy to go right and hard to go wrong.