The Hot List is the definitive guide to Melbourne’s most essential food and drink experiences, updated weekly. Learn more.

This week’s Hot List activity

• Added: Suupaa
• Most trending restaurant: Marmont
• Most trending bar: Caretaker’s Cottage
• Most trending cafe: Masses Bagels

Just like how Moon Mart isn’t actually a mart, Suupaa, which takes its cues from Japan’s iconic convenience stores, isn’t actually a konbini. Instead, this new restaurant and cafe in Cremorne by the Future Future team is more of a channelling-the-vibe situation.

We think you might like Access. For $12 a month, join our membership program to stay in the know.

SIGN UP

So, unlike at one of the more than 50,000 convenience stores in Japan, you can’t come to Suupaa to make payments, book tickets, print photocopies, send parcels (or suitcases) and stock up on basically any household essential you can think of. But you can have an excellent meal here that will remind anyone who’s travelled to Japan of the most common trilemma you’ll face there: should I eat at 7-Eleven, Family Mart or Lawson?

At this point, the konbini cat is well and truly out of the bag, and everyone knows that whether it’s a bento, an onigiri, a pastry or a piece of ludicrously juicy fried chicken, the best thing about a Japanese convenience store is the food. (I’ve even had a spaghetti bolognaise from a konbini in the middle of nowhere that had no right to be as good as it was.)

Suupaa’s tight menu, designed by fermentation expert Dennis Yong (of Furrmien and Parcs), nods to all of the convenience store staples – from takeaway onigiri, steamed buns, sandos and mortadella-packed musubi, to a more substantial line-up, including pork tonkatsu and garlic tan tan noodles, for eating in. It’s rounded out by fun drinks like a matcha with milo, and a banana cold brew.

Cremorne is a lot of things, but as anyone who’s ever wandered around it at lunchtime looking for a halfway compelling meal could tell you, it’s not exactly one of Melbourne’s gastronomic hotspots. (Even more so since Tarts Anon announced the closure of its Cremorne location this week.) And with how many office buildings there are – with plenty more to come – that really shouldn’t be the case.

Cremorne’s workers and locals should be thrilled to have Suupaa in the neighbourhood. They’re going to find it very convenient.

broadsheet.com.au/hotlist/melbourne