PAST / PORT
Executive chef Sarah Chan's signature Sarawak laksa anchors a 160-seat South-East Asian menu spanning Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia — with a new pre-order Lobster, Three Ways built for the table.
Overview
The Sarawak laksa at PAST / PORT is the dish to order, and the one executive chef Sarah Chan is most attached to — a signature lunch she traces straight back to her hometown. It also tells you what she is doing on level two of the reborn Waterside Hotel: running a 160-seat South-East Asian kitchen that treats nostalgia as a starting point rather than a gimmick.
Chan oversees the entire food program across the reborn seven-level pub, but PAST / PORT is the room that carries her name. She was there from the inception of Mya Tiger, the Cantonese diner at The Espy, and brings that pedigree to the kitchen she runs here. The brief here is wider than one cuisine: every dish is pitched as an ode to tradition, drawing on Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia, and built on Australian produce. Both venues are Sand Hill Road projects, the group now wholly focused on the Waterside after 26 years of reviving Melbourne pubs.
The menu rewards grazing. Snacks open with Nyonya pie tee with ocean trout, green nam jim and salmon caviar, tom yum prawn dumplings and a beef tartare with nam jim jaew and crispy rice, while the Sarawak laksa holds its place as a signature lunch and a chicken curry Kapitan carries the spice. The centrepiece, though, is a pre-order upgrade: Lobster, Three Ways, a whole lobster prepared three ways with 24 hours' notice — garlic butter and egg noodles; salted egg yolk and curry leaves; or a pineapple, ginger torch and basil curry — designed to anchor a table. Dessert keeps the nostalgia going with banana fritters in palm sugar caramel and a sticky date pudding with fish sauce caramel.
"Growing up around slow-simmered curries, sambals pounded by hand, and family feasts prepared with painstaking detail, I learned early that food is memory, love, and tradition on a plate," says Chan. The drinks list reads as locally as the produce: wines from Victorian growers Mac Forbes, Mulline and Yarra Yering, picked to stand up to spice, plus cocktails like the Jungle Bird and Pandan Fizz.
Images: Jimmy's Projects and Michael Pham.
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