A celebrity chef brings a party (and a Good Food hat) to this St Kilda pub

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Sometimes you don’t notice the mediocrity of the status quo until you experience excellence. Such was the epiphany I felt when eating the fritto misto ($44; more than enough to share) at Saint George in Saint Kilda.

The platter of fried seafood came piping hot, a jumble of soft calamari, crunchy little prawns, supple fillets of flathead, thinly sliced fried lemon, and crisped sage leaves. The tartare sauce on the side was brimming with herby flavour – so much fresher and punchier than the wan gloop that often passes as an accompaniment to fried seafood. There was enough fresh lemon to give the whole plate a lick of acid. Every element sang.

Everything here seems familiar but better, more interesting, more cared-for than the norm.

This is the constant running across the experience of Saint George, the Fitzroy Street venue that’s somewhere between a pub and a restaurant and which has gone through several transitions in recent years. The latest of those transitions was the acquisition of the venue by Public Hospitality, and the more recent involvement of well-known chef Karen Martini as culinary director.

Martini has just wrapped up a 17-year stint as the cooking expert on the show Better Homes and Gardens, as well as ending her relationship with ACMI in what was a fairly contentious closing of her Fed Square restaurant, Hero, in October. She’s brought much of that team with her to Saint George, as well as head chef Diana Desensi.

This is a massive space – a historic pub that’s been done and redone – and a hard one to make feel cohesive. But the soaring ceilings and brick walls have a classic, airy, modern feel. There are two distinct spaces: a more casual front bar, and a dining room in the back where the tablecloths are white, the kitchen is open, and the vibe is far more formal.

The Mediterranean menu leans Italian, but it’s the lighter, breezier side of that spectrum, with a few big hunks of meat thrown in for good measure.

The cocktails are beach-appropriate; I especially loved the No. 8 ($15), a variation on a Greyhound (vodka and grapefruit) that uses fresh juice and a splash of Campari for a truly refreshing drink with a hint of bitterness. (I adore the juicy bitterness of fresh grapefruit; I wish more cocktail and dessert practitioners embraced it.)

Everything here seems familiar but better, more interesting, more cared-for than the norm.

Here’s a spanner crab on toast ($22) but it’s dressed in lemon brown butter and has creamy white beans and tiny pickled onions and is topped with a flurry of Aleppo pepper and fresh celery leaves.

Here is strozzapreti pesto pasta ($34) but made with pistachio for a deep nuttiness, topped with dollops of stracciatella, and house-made pasta that gives way on the tooth just so.

Entrees are all cooked on a Josper grill, and tend towards a simple protein dressed with enough pizazz to make it special without distracting from the quality of the base ingredient.

In the case of a whole flounder (market price; $56 the day I had it), that means a perfect cook and a salmoriglio sauce, this version made with copious mustard seeds and fennel – herby and piquant and delicious.

For dessert, there’s a burnt pavlova for two ($28), or a torta capri bianco ($20), a perfectly moist almond cake that comes doused in Strega.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what our collective hopes should be for Saint Kilda, and Fitzroy Street in particular.

Martini herself has waxed nostalgic about the “grunginess” of the area in the ’90s, but I don’t think anyone is particularly enamoured of the backpacker booze-fest that overtook the street, or the slightly dead and discordant feeling it’s had since COVID.

Neither do I think a full swankification of the area would do it justice – part of the charm of St Kilda, at its best, was always its rollicking beachside welcome, and its deviance from the fanciness of its neighbouring suburbs closer to the river.

Saint George is a fun model to consider when thinking about reviving this part of town. It’s an inverse mullet of a restaurant: party up front, elegance in back.

It does the spirit of Fitzroy Street proud, and that’s a tricky task.