The Undertaker

Score: 14/20

It looked like the turning point of the evening.

A group of about 12 strolled in from the bar, where they'd been enjoying a pre-dinner drink, to the dining room for a spot of dinner; there goes the night.

Or so I thought.

The Undertaker, launched a few years back as a brand-new, big-budget rebuild of a heritage building in Hawthorn, had a few problems at the time, and one was noise. Another was light.

You couldn't hear yourself think and could barely read the menu.

But subtle tweaking of the room seems to have helped both issues and the perceived problem of the noisy big group doesn't eventuate. It soon transpires they're planning to have fun, but not at our expense.

The Undertaker opened in June 2005 - a three-level new-age pub with a dining room - with Maloufian scholar Dianne Kerry in the kitchen doing smaller shared plates reflecting Middle-Eastern and Spanish cuisines.

Through a number of interim chefs, the Frawley family, which bought the building and almost entirely rebuilt the place as a basement cocktail lounge/ground-floor restaurant with a first-floor wine bar/pub, has persisted. In that time, the flash Canvas restaurant has been built and opened almost directly opposite; you wouldn't quite call it a food-and-wine precinct, but there's now a lot more life in the area at night than when The Undertaker was, quite literally, an undertaker's parlour.

Getting back to the original, Moorish themes of the kitchen, Scottish expat Ian Alexander comes to the place as a former head chef of MoMo under Greg Malouf's direction before it closed to become Fifteen last year. His is not a slavishly Middle-Eastern direction but rather a contemporary brasserie approach peppered with those spices, herbs, fruits, grains and preparations to be found across that whole broad mod Middle-Eastern/Spanish/Greek/Turkish school. Good food.

Managing and on the floor as waiter and sommelier, wine enthusiast Bronwyn Kabboord (last seen at The Montague where her husband Rob cooked) brings to the place experience, a down-to-earth approach and a genuine sense of hospitality. It's a pretty good combination.

Ask Kabboord if there's anything she's excited by on the wine list in the way of whites and out comes a new (to me) gruner veltliner from an Austrian producer I've not heard of but am pleased to discover. The wine goes into Riedel glasses; you get a sense they're making an effort.

Oysters from Coffin Bay in South Australia ($2.50 each) are surprisingly good for the month; small of shell but plump and fleshy, they're dressed with a tomato/pomegranate/parsley/Spanish onion salsa.

Quickly char-grilled quail pieces ($19) have been subjected to a successful marination in pomegranate molasses (and, undoubtedly, many other things); they're nicely tanned, cooked not too far, and served with salad of endive, watercress, pomegranate seeds, parsley, red onion slivers and slices of grilled chorizo. A few arty smears of a quail jus/marinade on the plate, along with the scattered red seeds, give the dish an unstructured look that Ja'mie (from Summer Heights High) might call "like, totally random".

The most exciting dish is a jumble of Moroccan-spiced fried calamari ($17) dumped on a minted pea puree with shreds of fried leek; surrounding it all is a swirl of house-made tarama, wafers of black olive, small shoots and tomato dice with glistening pearls of salmon roe. There's salty relief, complementary flavours, visual interest, fresh ideas; I loved it.

Mains are, if anything, a little more straightforward.

A enticingly dark piece of quality hiramasa kingfish fillet ($32) is pan-fried for the correct duration and served basted with a fennel seed and parsley dressing; on the plate, a scattering of asparagus tips, capers, parsley leaves, a few baby chickpeas, potato pieces, grilled fennel and roasted baby tomatoes. And a baby chicken (here called spatchcock) is poached before frying ($33). It's segmented and served golden brown with a broad bean couscous smothered in a sweet-herby labne (or hung yoghurt) flavoured with coriander and honey. At the table, a "green harissa broth" is added to the bowl. It all works well, with excellent meat on the bone but perhaps doesn't offer quite the garlicky/chilli relief from the broth you'd hope for. Green beans with cinnamon yoghurt ($6) make for a good but unnecessary aside.

My comments on service: we - recognised by the manager - were looked after superbly but without sycophancy. Professional service. My wife had been with friends a month earlier and reported things to be not what they might be.

On this occasion, we enjoyed a thin, short-crust baked tart of cranberry, raspberry, walnut and white chocolate, served with a creme frache sorbet ($15) and a perky lime caramel syrup. It works well.

Even better is what the kitchen calls an (unbaked) charlotte, although in this case, the moulded pudding (think panna cotta) is lined with rhubarb batons instead of the traditional sponge ($14). On the plate, in a gloriously intense red rhubarb syrup laced with orange zest, are more pieces of tart/sweet rhubarb. A joy.

The Undertaker clearly now has the bones of a good team; as always, the place has great potential, and the restaurant is realising more of it than at any time in the past.

It's worth making a noise about.

Score: 1-9: Unacceptable . 10-11: Just OK, some shortcomings. 12: Fair. 13: Getting there. 14: Recommended. 15: Good. 16: Really good. 17: Truly excellent. 18: Outstanding. 19-20: Approaching perfection, Victoria's best.