The Roving Marrow

Ask anyone which restaurants to take the kids to  and you'll get uniform responses: yum cha, Italians and the pub. Some kids call BS. Hudson Tarasiuk, 12 – he likes eating in pubs, but he'll also smash a blood-based soup at a Footscray Vietnamese, and remembers when the snow crab dish at Attica changed his world. He was seven at the time. He now writes a blog. It's called Hudson Eats, and it's good.

Tarasiuk may be an exceptional Tavi Gevinson of food, but he's not alone. I was that kid. So I dedicate this week's review not to "kid-friendly restaurants" but hospo gun Darren Smith's new slam dunk for restaurant-friendly kids. It's in a pub (tick). The food is served yum cha-style (double tick), but in place of fluffy pork buns, chef Hayden McMillan is putting contemporary-European plates on wheels. You can be any height to take this ride, and Tarasiuk co-piloted to prove it.

What used to be Percy's Bar, a sticky carpet footy pub, is now a reverse-mullet public bar-restaurant with the party up front serving upscale hot dogs, and fancy negronis designed by Barber Shop's Mike Enright, and serious business out back.

I find Tarasiuk at the bar, feet swinging from a sleek new stool, Canon in hands, his dad's Campari soda bubbling behind him. He likes that the room feels like old Australia with a modern shape – all wood veneer panels, chocolate syrup tiles and banquettes the colour of a rich fake tan.

If the yum cha concept sounds like a gamble it's a calculated one. Two sittings see a trolley loaded with a limited number of tweezer-driven small plates that know no geographical bounds – oysters spiked with the garlicky heat of kimchi; light, crunchy dehydrated taro and kale crisps for running though tart goat's curd with a glug of olive oil – winners both, FYI. Hot dishes and desserts are fired to order from the kitchen.

This isn't shouty yum cha. It's quiet, refined. In place of oolong by the bucket there's a 10-tea kombucha that wins Tarasiuk over to ferments by being light on the vinegary fizz. On the harder side of things, there's Luke Lambert's grippy, fusty Crudo rosé and a crunchy 2011 Domaine Rolet Arbois savagnin from a tight list with natural leanings, compiled by former Icebergs'​ somm Ruldoph Bertin​.

Behind the novelty, there's serious skill. A sweet potato and coconut soup is nutty and mellow, poured from a yum cha teapot over a crazy bright coriander gremolata, and tempering the punchy garlicky herb blitz-up like a ref in a fight. Pickled clams are served in brine, subtly vanilla-spiked so that it tastes of sweetcorn, almost like a super fresh corn chowder.

Tarasiuk is all in, at every step. We dip celery sticks into a silky chicken liver parfait blasted with finely crushed peanut-honeycomb dust and see recess reinvented. To Tarasiuk, a kid of the peanut-free world, it's a fresh and salty revelation.

A classic-ish Korean kimchi pancake is another first, all crispness and squidge, the batter densely populated with fermented cabbage and nudged into the now by a cream concealing the sweet citric bombs of finger lime caviar. It works.

Trad yum cha fans should note there's little on the greasy hangover assuaging front. You're also looking at $60 a head once you factor in mains of a just-set hen's egg nesting in a potato foam with the crunch and squish of fried shallots and enoki mushrooms, plus rounds of the juicy, shreddy and rooty beef dumplings, somewhere between ravioli and a wonton filled with shredded short rib topped with daikon.

Dessert? "Kids always have room for dessert," Tarasiuk tells me, though he reports that, while his caramel roasted banana, milk caramel and coconut is good, "the sticky and sweet coating on the banana is delicious" and the "ice-cream is a cloud-like mousse", it's also less than explosive. But that's a minor crit amid a huge rave. "The concept of the Roving Marrow is one that there should be more of – two hours of mystery, intrigue and flavour blasts," says Tarasiuk. Amen to that.

THE LOWDOWN
Pro tip: The bar's bratwurst is also worth a nudge
Go-to dish: Chicken liver parfait with peanut honeycomb dust and celery, $7.50 
Like this? Good. There's nothing like it.