Some meals are best accompanied by a tasty sauce, a glass of red and a satisfying conversation.
Some are best served up with booming old school rock, slick customised steel, hallucinatory tiki-style libations and a glowing neon tiger.
The vibrant fare on offer at Melbourne’s most irreverent addition to designer dining definitely falls into the latter category. You might even get dinner accompanied by free-falling C-Bombs.
You can thank the 22-year-old mind of epicurean Einstein Davis Yu (The Millswyn, Touché Hombre) for this Pan Asian spectacular. Claremont Tonic is collaborative brainchild of Maison Davis’ avant-garde entrepreneurial spirit and Head Chef Dylan Roberts’ 17 years of kitchen wizardry, birthed into a raw Hecker Guthrie fit-out amidst Melbourne’s thriving fashion epicenter.
Oblige your taste for both the culinary and the comical with the King of the Chimichangas, a DIY Jap-Mex taco box containing raw king salmon, fish roe and deep-fried nori shells. Other crowd-pleasers include Double Duck Blinis and Ramen ’58 along with the aforementioned C-Bomb — a whole cleaved watermelon filled with a minty mix of vodka and rhubarb juice.
Delirium has never been quite so memorable.
Claremont Tonic
15A Cnr Claremont Street & Yarra Lane, South Yarra, VIC 3181
T: 03 9827 0399
Tues – Sat 5.30pm – midnight
Fridays noon – 2.30pm
