Travel rules mean it's not yet easy to take an eating trip to Japan: tourists are only permitted on guided tours for now. Luckily, Melbourne is increasingly rich in very specific, very delightful riffs on the many strands that make up Japanese dining. There's soba specialist Shimbashi in Collingwood, which stone-mills buckwheat on-site then makes the flour into noodles.

In a hard-to-find city basement, Ishizuka elegantly unfurls the rituals of multi-course kaiseki cuisine. There's the constant sizzle of crumbed and fried pork at Ichi Katsu in busy Glen Waverley. And all I can think about now is the many places I've missed out.

But let's talk about the exciting offerings of Kantaro Okada. The New Zealand-raised son of a sushi chef, Okada once ran an Australian-style cafe in Tokyo and he's just opened his third and fourth Japanese-style eateries in Melbourne.

His debut, the calm, composed 279 cafe, specialises in musubi (rice balls) in West Melbourne. In North Melbourne, Le Bajo Milkbar (owned with Jason Gunawan, founder of Bali beach club Potato Head) focuses on shokupan (fluffy milk bread) in an op-shoppy garage.

In nearby Carlton, Okada has just opened two more places: Hareruya Pantry does takeaway bento boxes, fried chicken and ice-cream, perfect for families visiting the new treehouse playground in the park opposite.

Above low-key Hareruya, and accessible through an unmarked iron black door, you'll climb to Leonie Upstairs, a lounge-y sake bar that also serves temaki (cone-shaped sushi hand rolls) and other snacks. It's such a cool place: poised, cosy and spirited.

To the right, there's a bar with a shared tall table and couches by the windows. Sheer curtains gently separate that space from the small dining room. On a mezzanine, counter seating faces chefs composing dishes under rope-strung drying persimmons. The timber joinery and furniture is exquisite, interlocking and nail-free, made by local craftspeople ByDave. The peaked ceiling with handsome trusses looks like it was part of the build but actually informed it, a remainder of the construction office that inhabited this space before.

The design inspiration is American-Japanese sculptor Isamu Noguchi, whose multi-stranded work explored the relationship of people and objects to their environment.

Noguchi's mother, the American writer Léonie Gilmour, is the restaurant's namesake. Highlighting undersung women is something of a thread here. Many of the 50 sakes on pour are brewed by women, who were traditionally excluded from the industry. Temaki are also from the female sphere: this casual style of sushi is mostly eaten in the home, and while high-falutin' nigiri is subject to much lore, temaki culture is more permissive.

An illustrated menu lists 12 temaki. I tried sea urchin ($21), which is slung with tiny sea grapes, and rich, sweet eel ($15) folded with slivers of omelette. Both sing with integrity.

Unlike sushi rolls, which are tightly scrolled and often pre-made, temaki are kept loose and served immediately, so the seaweed sheets are still crisp and the ingredients unsquished.

Beyond temaki, there's a fermented platter ($23), which you could think of as a quirky cheese plate. Smoked, pickled daikon (a typical sake snack) is mixed with cream cheese and egg salad. Parmesan crackers are on hand to scoop it up. It's an umami party: rich, salty, savoury, sweet and crunchy. Raw scallops ($26) are the protein hero in a pretty mosaic that counterpoints golden yuzu dressing with purple shiso vinaigrette. There's joy in trying the flavours separately; there's a sparky resolution in melding them.

Mont Blanc is a French dessert named after the mountain. In its traditional form, chestnut puree is extruded to build vermicelli-like squiggles into a peak; whipped cream "snow" is piped atop. Leonie Upstairs makes its mountain ($19) out of mochi (sweet glutinous rice cake) and pavlova, taking Mont Blanc to Mount Fuji and then swooping to, I don't know, Mount Hotham, perhaps. The chestnut is piped at the table in a theatrical flourish so that the threads have the pleasing lightness of just-fallen snow.

The food is designed to go with sake: another bite, another sip. That said, it would be great to get more information about the drinks. Unless you're an expert, the alluring menu holds its secrets and not all staff are able to unlock them. It's a small quibble, and understandable given that sake experts are not beating the heavy iron door down for jobs. What's not in short supply is a warm welcome, a creative through line and the opportunity to revel in the ongoing pleasures of dining out in Melbourne.

The low-down

Vibe Cosy sake bar specialising in sushi hand rolls

Go-to dish Scallop carpaccio ($26)

Drinks 50 sakes, with a focus on female producers