There is something happening in Hastings. You can feel it in the slow shift of the main street and in the growing sense that this part of the Peninsula is beginning to expect a little more of itself. 

For the better part of five months, a few very knowledgeable friends — serious food people who know their way around some of the Peninsula’s best wineries and restaurants — kept banging on about Deep Water Lounge in Hastings and how good it was. We were a little slow to take the hint. 

Turns out they were bang on. Deep Water Lounge is something of an anomaly in Hastings — in the best possible way — and well worth making the trip for. It is ambitious. Moody. Grown-up. A little theatrical. And, perhaps most importantly, it is not what many people expect to find in Hastings. 

The name itself comes from the deep water of Westernport, but there is something else in it too. Someone has taken the plunge. Deep Water Lounge has gone into the deep end with a proper restaurant, cocktail bar, live piano, private dining and a level of food and hospitality that would sit comfortably in some of the more established dining pockets elsewhere on the Peninsula. Only this time, it is here. 

Walk through the front door and the venue immediately divides into two distinct worlds. 

To the left is the bar and live music space. Low light. Cocktails. Piano. A place where you can settle in for a drink, stay for another and perhaps decide that whatever else you had planned for the evening can wait. 

To the right sits the restaurant, private dining room and kitchen. The two sides can operate together or independently, which gives Deep Water Lounge a flexibility that is genuinely useful. You can come for dinner, simply have a drink, listen to live music, or take over part of the venue for something more intimate. 

That also makes it a very good option for micro-weddings, milestone birthdays, private dinners, corporate gatherings and the kind of event where fifty people in a cavernous function room would be overkill. 

The service is attentive and slick without hovering, and the whole place carries a relaxed confidence. Cool, calm and collected — which, given the name, feels about right. 

And getting there is easier than many people might think. Hastings is well connected to the middle of the Peninsula and Melbourne’s south-east, with uncomplicated access and plenty of nearby parking. From Mount Martha, it took us around 20 minutes — hardly an expedition for a good night out. 

Then there is the food. 

Head Chef Brenton Styles has a background that deserves some attention. His career has taken him through kitchens in London, to the rarefied hospitality world of Hotel Le Toiny in St Barts, and back to the Mornington Peninsula, including time as a chef at Audrey’s at The Continental Sorrento. He also made it to the semi-finals of MasterChef: The Professionals, UK edition. That is a fair amount of culinary mileage. 

But rather than turn the dining room into an exercise in chef theatre, Brenton’s food lands somewhere much more appealing. 

There is serious technique behind it, certainly. But there is also flavour. Proper flavour. The kind that arrives with intent rather than decoration. The Spring Menu gives you a fair indication of where his head is at. 

There is scallop carpaccio with house ponzu, fennel, blood orange, basil, pistachio and tobiko. A warm salad of Aurum duck with new season potato, green beans, poached egg and Flinders black truffle pesto. Blue swimmer crab with zucchini flower, basil, lemon and bisque. A 48-hour slow-cooked Otway pork collar with capsicum, spring beans and Main Ridge chèvre. And a Murray cod dish with green asparagus, dill, capers, almond, squid and vermouth sauce. 

The food is considered, but not anaemic. This is where the idea of the flavour bomb probably comes into play. There is finesse, but not at the expense of pleasure. 

Even the bar snacks tell you they are not phoning it in. Mushroom parfait with crispy chicken skin and onion jam on hazelnut brioche. Cauliflower and truffled pecorino gougère. Deep Water fried chicken with burnt onion mayonnaise. 

And for those who just want something familiar with a drink, there are still herb-salted chips and salt and pepper calamari. 

The cocktail list has been treated with the same seriousness. Head mixologist and bartender Brad Kantelberg takes obvious pride and joy in what he creates. It doesn’t mean he won’t happily pour you a beer or a glass of regional wine, but put him behind a shaker and start working through the cocktail list and you can see where he comes alive. 

Classics are well represented, from an Old Fashioned and Negroni to Margaritas, Mojitos and Espresso Martinis, while the signature list starts to show more personality. Aussie Negroni. Deep Water Dancer. Jimmy Loves Spice. Crimson Moon. Amaro Couture. Yuzu Lychee Martini. Even the mocktails have been given some thought, which should probably be the minimum expectation these days but often isn’t. 

The important thing is that the bar feels like a destination in its own right, rather than somewhere you stand awkwardly waiting for your table. And then there is the question hanging over almost every restaurant at the moment. 

What is it going to cost? Hospitality is doing it tough. Patrons are still going out, but there is considerably more thought being applied to where, how often and what they are getting for 

their money. Call it cost-of-living pressure. We call it ‘costaphobia’. Whatever term you use, the hesitation is real. 

Deep Water Lounge appears to understand that. There is a difference between looking expensive and being expensive. Entrées sit largely in the mid-$20s to mid-$30s, mains from the mid-$40s through to around $60, and there is enough flexibility across the restaurant and bar menus to spend according to the occasion. You can have oysters and a cocktail. A few bar snacks and some live music. Or go all in with dinner and make a proper night of it. Thankfully, the drama appears to have been reserved for the room and the food rather than the bill. That matters. Value matters. Because good hospitality is not only about creating something impressive. It is about creating something people actually want to return to. 

Deep Water Lounge has the mood, the credentials and the ambition. But what makes it particularly interesting is where it has chosen to do it. Hastings. Not Sorrento. Not Flinders. Not Red Hill. Hastings. And perhaps that is the real story. 

The Westernport side of the Peninsula is changing. The audience is changing with it. And places like Deep Water Lounge suggest the dining landscape is beginning to change too. Sometimes the best thing to do is simply dive right in. We did, and came away genuinely awakened and refreshed by what Deep Water Lounge brings to the broader Mornington Peninsula dining scene. 

Well done to Nigel Bainger, Ellie Thomas and the broader Deep Water Lounge team. Very impressive. Keep at it. We surely coming back for more.