This add-on is like the designer dress you stumble upon in an op shop: an absolute steal

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New restaurants can be fun and exciting, but if you really want to be carried along by a dining experience, find yourself an eatery that’s just turned three. The kinks have been ironed out and the owners have shrugged off the overreach and imposter syndrome of the early months.

Neighbourhood regulars have smoothed any rough edges, just as their derrieres have polished the chairs. Team members who didn’t quite belong have moved on and the remainder can easily help new recruits settle into a system and rhythm. Three is still young and energetic, but innovation springs from an assured base. There’s nothing as enjoyable as a restaurant that knows exactly who it is and what it’s trying to do, and that’s Manze now, sitting in the sweet spot.

What’s it like to dive into a meal here? Maybe you’re on one of 24 seats inside, where the cosy room feels like an arty bowerbird lounge. Pickle jars and wine bottles line the walls like cheery sentinels, local flowers and sturdy pot plants connect soil and table, a jumble of cookbooks seems to celebrate the international family of happy cooks – we’re part of something.

Perhaps there’s cruisy dub music playing as a nip of pineapple rhum lands before you, the same music sound-waving through an arched hatch to the small kitchen, where there’s a gentle sizzle of octopus over charcoal (you’ll get those tentacles later, with watercress soup and rice).

Or maybe you’re sitting at a pavement table, passersby perambulating. A cluey waiter suggests wine made by nuns in Lazio, Italy, which finds perfect – heavenly? – harmony with diced raw tuna and chilli-fermented pineapple piled on merveilles, dainty canape crackers that are usually plate-sized Mauritian beach snacks.

“The green melon starter is bracing and disarming; so sweet, so tart, so good.”

There’s an easy balance of comfort and surprise, the startling elements held safely by spirited hospitality.

Nagesh Seethiah runs his restaurant with co-owners Osman Faruqi, a culture journalist, and visual artist Jason Phu, but it’s Seethiah who’s here day to day. Mauritian-born and New Zealand-raised from the age of eight, he studied law and art history in Canberra, working in restaurants on the side. The venue springs from Seethiah’s art studies as much as his culinary ambition.

This is the restaurant as a morphing creole that’s more Mauritian than anything else, but also an extremely Melbourne expression of the local and seasonal, and a very Australian example of a multicultural kitchen with influences from Thailand, India and elsewhere.

Sous chefs Jeed Chu and Saavni Krishnan, The Age Good Food Guide’s Young Chef of the Year 2025, collaborate on the menu, and both women are encouraged to foster their own side projects.

The team has experimented with various menu structures but recently settled on a three- or four-course set menu ($65/$80), with a two-course option at lunch ($40). Offerings can be amplified with add-ons, like the unmissable taro fritter ($4.50 each), a key Mauritian street eat, and the only dish that’s always on. You can also try your luck with walk-in nibbles.

Mauritian food is one of the world’s great melanges with influences from India, Africa, China and Europe. That melding and merging is also expressed in language: manze is the Mauritian Creole word for “to eat” or “food”.

I’m still thinking about the green melon dressed with chilli vinegar to create a cleansing starter that’s also a statement of intent: bracing and disarming, so sweet, so tart, so good.

The seafood platter ($25 supplement) sounds bougie, but there’s an indie spin: whole Victorian flathead is splayed on the plate in a herby, lemon-pickle-spiked butter sauce strewn with mussels and salmon caviar. It’s like the designer dress you stumble upon in an op shop: absolutely gorgeous, an absolute steal.

You can always seduce me with salad, in this case a showcase of what’s just been picked at Dog Creek Growers, a city fringe farm. The choppy tangle of greens and sprouting garlic is rumbled with chilli-lemon dressing.

Dessert is a spin on rasmalai, a south Asian sweet of fresh cheese kneaded with sugar and cardamom, made here with ricotta because it’s more practical than curdling milk and wondering what to do with the whey. Rasmalai is usually formed into balls and cooked in syrup, but this cheese mix is steamed in little bundt moulds and served over sliced strawberries.

You get a sense of the conversations that must happen at Manze: the font of culture and tradition, the crafting anew, the confidence and freedom to test and flourish here and now.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine