Opening at the end of last year, it joins a burgeoning food strip up the Aquarium end of town, where along Katherine Place you’ll find excellent boiled and baked bagels (5 and Dime), funky Indian street food (Delhi Streets), colourful Taiwanese dumplings (Mr Huang Jin) and now Archie, who’s bringing canned cocktails and name-checked Victorian produce on a menu with a broad Eurasian lean.

With Edison bulbs dangling from cords, exposed air ducts, hanging greenery and black-grouted white tiles, it has the feel of a restaurant designed by architects who specialise in offices. Which it is.

But it’s the huge Archie Green written in neon that dominates, bathing the room in an otherworldly, unappetising, green.

Though many tables remained empty throughout this night, the host made a fuss of fitting me in which, for the drop-in kind of place this purports to be, isn’t a great opening act. But other staff seem pretty switched on and are well briefed by the kitchen.

On the drinks, there’s an impressive 20-strong line up of gins, with eight beers on tap where an Asahi schooner will set you back $14, a Nastro Azzurro $13. Ouch.

Wines jump across the globe, which seems a missed opportunity to celebrate the local.

And those canned cocktails are so Melbourne they were pioneered in Sydney’s Continental Deli a couple of years ago. I found the Old Fashioned too unidimensionally sweet.

The menu is an eclectic collection of Asian ingredients (star anise, pickled daikon, five spice) and Euro dishes (croquettes, pate en croute) that start with a single serve snacks.

There’s a doughnut rolled in five spice and sugar that’s piped with chicken liver parfait. With cold parfait, sweet dough, sticky agave gel and crunchy sugar, even the most craving-addled pregnancy would struggle to dream up a more disgusting combination ($5).

The smoked pig’s cheek croquette lacked discernible smokiness, and though the outer retained its requisite crack, the filling was baby food sloppy. And squid ink mayo adds nothing but an overused trendy ingredient to the whole ($4.50 each).

Though it sounds interesting, the pumpkin tartare was little more than a dice of off-puttingly crunchy pumpkin piled high on a lettuce leaf ($6). It was hard to eat without cutlery as intended, though you probably wouldn’t want to anyway.

Much better for the vegetarian team, a generous serve of buffalo curd from Shaw River — arguably the best producer in the state, if not the country — attended by curls of crunchy pickled daikon, quarters of juicy fresh radishes and a dusting of pistachio and black lime dukkah ($14). It’s easily the dish of the night.

For while the ambition is to be applauded, the pate en croute — the technical trick of pate baked in pastry — is jarringly at odds with the rest of the menu.

Served fridge cold, the hard pastry offered little in the way of elegance to the chunky pork and pistachio terrine studded with duck gizzard.

While the pate had a rich gamy depth, the busy salad it was served with — cold chunky fennel, grapes and hazelnuts — had an odd metallic tang and was a confusing mess.

When French master chef Philippe Mouchel charges $21 for his exceptional version up the other end of the city, it only heightens the audacity of charging $26 for this.

It is, however, preferable to the confit calamari, where the slippery cephalopod ribbons had all the appeal of swallowing a chest cold ($21).

But if you were under the weather, the pea and quinoa ragout would be a welcome warmer, full of deliciously cheesy comfort.

But the garlic chips on top, though good for warding off colds, are too heavy handed and overpower, and the cold egg yolk they hid? I shiver thinking of the sticky horror of it ($18).

In a quarter-full restaurant, the kitchen was very slow, even though I only ordered from the small plate/cold section.

I just couldn’t face roast pork with smoked eggplant, grapefruit and jalapeños, or a $28 plate of charred broccoli for main.

With too much, from too many places, going on the menu would definitely benefit from both an edit and a clearer focus.

As far as missives from the heart go, this is less curlicues of poetry on a perfume-spritzed card, and more ransom note from a stalker.

Archie, thanks for your letter. But we’re not going to go steady.

This review originally appeared on heraldsun.com.au.