With million-buck views, on-site parking and a ready-built membership base that’s always hungry, surf lifesaving clubs are perfect restaurant real estate.

We’re blessed with coastline that’s world-beating, but when it comes to eating by it, our holiday spots usually favour flavour that’s fried.

Enter Captain Moonlite — Matt Germanchis and Gemma Gange’s inspired bolt of clever that’s transformed the Anglesea Surf Lifesaving Club into a No shirt, No shoes, No service dining room of beachside note.

While the duo took over the space in April, they closed in winter to refurbish the room in a supremely comfortable vision of soft greys and navy, reopening in spring.

There’s real wow factor at play here; not only the extraordinary view that’s enjoyed from the dining room and deck, but also on the plate, thanks to Matt, late of Pei Modern (from which he has taken the very handsome tables). It’s still a surf club: with paddles and kayaks in the roof beams, honour boards on the wall and framed pictures of various Speedo-ed moustachioed members that provide a vision of Aussie summers past as iconic as a framed Max Dupain.

Gemma (also a Pei Modern alum) looks after the floor with breezy flair, and while there’s no doubt the young team will have its work cut out over the summer months, now there’s a relaxed air to getting the job done. Frosty glasses for beer — Prickly Moses and Furphy are nice hyper-local additions to Carlton Draught on tap — and wines by the elegant Plumm glass poured at the table (well, sometimes) show attention to detail, and if service comes with the occasional bewildered look, that’s tempered by smiles as big as that horizon of sea.

And if it takes a minute or two longer to get your bottle of Bellarine pinot gris or glass  of Sunbury rose from Gemma’s short, sharp, all Vic list, or indeed there’s a delay for your mains, then just take in that view. For it’s all worth the wait. Excellent produce, treated with restraint — but enough creativity to keep things interesting — is the mantra here. So while you’ll find eminently approachable dips served with a bag of warmed pita on the snack side of the ledger ($10), so, too, a plate-size pockmarked prawn cracker that’s redefinitively clever, the best $5 you’ll spend all summer and reason enough to hit the B100. With seaweed and dried prawns adding proper sea saltiness to all the crunch, that icy beer tastes even better.

Calamari is equally user-friendly, but cooked with such precision — the lightest dusting of seasoned flour colours the flash-fried tan, spoon-soft tubes and tentacles — served  on deft sesame-dressed endive, it’s a classic salad for a new summer ($18).

Fish and chips, ditto. A thick fillet of perfect rockling, a tempura batter of wispy refinement, chips with fluffy crunch to swipe in aioli. Simply lovely ($25).

A generous slab of golden saganaki cements the Greek taverna vibe of the menu; though the tiles of pickled beetroot atop, a drizzle of subtly sweet honey and a firm crack of pepper, places the dish firmly in the here and now ($12).

Warm-hearted Aegean generosity is unmistakeable in the huge hunk of lamb, a two-piece cut of shoulder and chop slow cooked in the oven for a salty caramelised crust and fork-tender flesh. Kohlrabi ribbons add crunch, mushy minty peas add goat’s curdy green, it all adds up to a
whole lot of happy ($38).

Good times continue through to the end: fluffy cinnamon-dusted doughnut balls to dunk in a salted caramel sauce ($8); an orb of excellent vanilla ice cream with blueberries dusted in bracingly sharp lemon powder ($10).

It’s the perfect blend of casual class and refined smarts at prices to please that makes Captain Moonlite such a winner. For Anglesea at least, summer has been saved.

This review originally appeared on heraldsun.com.au.