Supernormal

Supernormal opened on Flinders Lane in 2014 as the loose, late-running counterpart to Andrew McConnell's more formal rooms, and it has stayed one of the busiest dining rooms in the Melbourne CBD: an open kitchen, a long bar you can eat at alone, a karaoke room downstairs, and a modern-Asian menu that leans Japanese. Gourmet Traveller called it "free-wheeling, fun, flavour-forward and far better than any carbon copy", which is also a fair description of how the drinks list behaves.

What earns it a place here is structural rather than incidental. The cocktail card, dated on its face and reprinted as it changes, prints ALCOHOL FREE COCKTAILS as a heading with five drinks under it, then ALCOHOL FREE & LOW ABV BEER, then ALCOHOL FREE & LOW ABV WINE. That is three separate alcohol-free categories on a card that runs to eight pages, and the drinks in them are built the way the alcoholic ones are: Plum & Petal uses passionfruit husk rather than juice, Matsurika sets jasmine against apple and lemon verbena, and the seasonal soda has run tamarind with bay leaf and Vermont maple. Tea Totaler, at A$12, is chamomile, jasmine and ginger, and is the drink to ask for if you want something long and low-sugar.

The bottled side is unusually deep for a restaurant. Bridge Road 'Free Time' pale ale and Hop Nation 'Mind Ya Head' XPA cover beer at 0.5%; the wine runs Vinada sparkling chardonnay, Kolonne Null sparkling rose at 0.0%, a Chalmers vermentino from Heathcote, a Plus + Minus rose from the Adelaide Hills and Leitz 'Eins-Zwei Zero.Five' pinot noir, all available by the glass. There is also a reserve tea selection - gyokuro, genmaicha, yuzu kukicha - which for a non-drinker at a long dinner is the most useful part of the whole list. Book ahead; the room is loud and full most nights, and the bar seats are the best place to drink from this card.