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Van Tran doesn’t really want you to come to Muli, if she’s being honest, and honesty is Van’s strong suit. “We’re booked out,” she’ll tell you if you call. If you happen by on a night when one of the tables is miraculously empty, she might let you sit there, and once you’re sitting there, Van is likely to become your new best friend. But she has no interest in being busy. “It’s too stressful,” she says. “We tried it, and it was no fun. We’re still figuring out what we’re doing.”

Van and her family have never run a restaurant before, but they have a successful business providing high-end seafood to restaurants and via their D&K Live Seafood market in Footscray. Muli is an experiment, to see whether they can extend that business into a hospitality venture, but one that is exceedingly unconventional and hyper-focused on unique (and mostly very expensive) seafood dishes.

Muli is not for everyone, and I mean that both in the sense that you might not appreciate a restaurant that is built on the passions and needs of the owners rather than the convenience of the guest, and also that you simply might not be able to get a table there. If you do, the experience is more like a freewheeling dinner party than the traditional customer/server interaction.

There are only five tables in this tiny black-walled room, and they’re all round, covered in doily-like lace tablecloths, and spin like a loose lazy susan in a way that I’m not sure is purposeful. There are cushioned banquettes and soft furry pillows and the whole thing looks more like a slightly severe dollhouse tearoom than a seafood restaurant.

You might wait a good 20 minutes to order, while Van sits and chats animatedly with other guests. She wants to know everyone’s name, whether they’re from the neighbourhood, how long they’ve been with their partners, how many kids they have. When it comes to the food, she wants to walk you over to the pristine tanks lining the walls, which look more like exotic home aquariums than the dim seafood tanks at most live seafood restaurants.

What’s in those tanks? Some of the most esoteric species of crab and fish you’re likely to find anywhere in the country. There are marron from Western Australia, and spiny lobsters, but also Queensland coral crabs, and slipper lobster – a variety that is often conflated with bugs but which has larger front legs and is not commonly commercially fished. If you don’t have a friend who fishes in a very specific region, this may be the only place to try some of these species.

Next to the tanks is an oyster bed with multiple varieties (prices start at $33 for six or $8 each for reserve varieties), still alive, sitting on rocks under a rush of running water. The water is seawater brought back from the Mornington Peninsula every couple of days to keep the oysters as close to their natural state as possible.

The difference in taste and texture between these and days-out-of-water norm is astounding, as you’ll undoubtedly know if you’ve ever eaten one fresh from the ocean – the miracle of Muli is having that same experience on decidedly dry land.

“There are so many delicious things to eat at Muli that I’ve never eaten before, and folks, I’ve eaten a lot of things.”

Not everything that comes from those tanks is so pristine. One night we ordered a whole sea urchin ($28), and got a darkly mottled and slightly bitter specimen – “It was the best one I could find,” Van’s son David told us, adding, “It’s the end of the season.”

And some things are overdressed or otherwise besmirched, like the sashimi tasting plate ($78), which showcases tuna, salmon, kingfish, and scallop, but relies too much on sweet sauces and additions.

Muli is at its best at its simplest. Get a Queensland slipper lobster roll ($45), a glorious few mouthfuls of the sweetest lobster meat on a tiny buttery roll, or a simple rice-paper roll stuffed with fresh yabby ($15).

Get a tender giant tiger prawn ($38), steamed with garlic butter, or a whole lobster ($128), which comes grilled or raw, as sashimi.

Hell, go for one of those coral crabs, which cost $198 a pound (about 500 grams), which comes out to well over $100 for one crab, but might just be the most succulent, roe-filled, messy, extravagant thing you’ll eat all year.

There are so many delicious things to eat at Muli that I’ve never eaten before, and folks, I’ve eaten a lot of things.

For dessert, they serve sea urchin ice-cream ($18), which isn’t as weird as it sounds, much to my disappointment. The main thing the urchin adds is a distinct kind of creaminess, plus a hint of salinity – you can add extra salinity via the small dish of salt provided if you so desire.

Muli is probably destined to become something more like a private club than a true restaurant, a place where diners who care deeply about extremely rarefied shellfish will find their bliss.

Van doesn’t want you there until she does, at which point you’ve likely got a friend for life, as well as access to some of the world’s most beautiful seafood.

I hope this weird little business finds its groove, and its people, and for all its oddity, I hope to be among them.