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What if I told you it would only take one day to eat at half a dozen top Melbourne and Sydney restaurants, take a quick trip to London for a killer sandwich and then zip to the Mornington Peninsula for rice pudding? No, I haven’t invented teleportation: all I’ve done is introduce you to a new cafe with a unique concept.

Square One Rialto showcases dishes from 10 top chefs on an all-day menu that will change every season. The spring offering starts with a vegie platter ($19) by salad queen Frankie Cox from Richmond’s Green-On, jaunts to Sydney for a beetroot tart ($19) by Jemma Whiteman, chef at Newtown’s Ante, and finishes in London’s Lisboeta restaurant with a messy and marvellous bifana (pork sandwich; $19) from Portuguese chef Nuno Mendes.

Feel like something more familiar? A house menu works as a please-all-comers adjunct, covering off easy stuff such as chia pudding ($18), and eggs with extras.

That’s exciting enough – brunch menus can be staid and a built-in refresh means there will always be reasons to return (also, so many restaurants, so little time) – but there’s more underpinning this sleek, spacious cafe.

When the 80-seat atrium opened in August, it became the newest business from Mulberry Group, which also owns wine den Lilac in Cremorne, elegant restaurant Hazel and cocktail dive Dessous (both in Flinders Lane), plus art-lovers’ lunch lounge Heide Kitchen.

The spiritual home of the group isn’t in Melbourne, though: it’s at Common Ground Project, a farm to the west, just past Geelong. Common Ground grows food without using chemical fertilisers and sells it to Mulberry Group restaurants, with 10 per cent of profits from the eateries returned to the farm, which has numerous community-building initiatives.

Vegetable boxes are picked and packed for householders and women facing barriers to employment become skilled and confident at producing meals for food relief (80 per cent of participants have found other jobs). There’s corporate volunteering and school tours, a cafe, and workshops on aligned activities, such as beeswax candle-making.

Square One’s relationship with the farm is central, as guest chefs conceive their dishes around harvests and the cafe’s recipes will be shared in a cookbook, proceeds of which will go back to – you’ve guessed it – the farm.

Dishes from 10 top chefs are showcased on an all-day menu that will change every season.

Ecosystems may not be the first thing that comes to mind as you bring your hungry belly to Collins Street, but Square One foregrounds these connections, possibilities and ethics without shoving worthiness down your throat. If you want to come for a flat white and a chat about a flatlining share portfolio, no one will look askance: your $5 coffee is going to help, whether you care or not. Your food spend will help even more.

Chances are, you’ll never go to Greasy Zoe’s in Hurstbridge. The two-hat restaurant has eight seats and is only open four times a week, but bookings are snapped up by dedicated foodies willing to spend $175 on dinner.

The good news is that you can come here to eat chef Zoe Birch’s excellent mushroom schnitzel ($24). Made from a shaggy slab of crumbed, fried lion’s mane fungus, it’s served alongside other grilled mushrooms over creamy macadamia “hummus” and green garlic oil. It’s tasty, satisfying and not a million miles from her fine-dining food.

I’m a fan of local chef Tom Sarafian (ex-Bar Saracen), who’s currently without a permanent restaurant. So it suits me that his wholesome and hearty borek – golden wafers of filo pastry sandwich rough-chopped greens and goat feta, with more greens and pickles on the side ($23) – is in residence here.

Victor Liong’s cumin lamb pancake ($24) is many things: a spicy Lanzhou classic, a reminder to visit his restaurant Lee Ho Fook, and an illustration of more ancillary benefits of the Square One project.

Executive chef Scott Eddington tells me Liong spent a day in the kitchen here showing staff how to prepare the dough for this savoury pastry. It’s skill-building that also forges connections in an industry characterised by dedicated chefs chipping away at their own kitchen coalfaces.

Square One Rialto is a vote of confidence in the CBD’s patchy COVID-19 recovery. This corner space launched as the Mercedes Me concept store and cafe in 2017, died at the start of the pandemic and has been sitting sad and empty. Commuter cafes are still struggling – Pope Joan and Babajan at the top end of the CBD both closed recently – so it’s nice to see a drawcard business feeding money and heart back into the city centre.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine