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There are many signifiers of a truly great food city, as I’ve discussed before, but one is the existence of successful restaurants that are super weird and specific. It means our chefs and restaurateurs are experienced enough, confident enough, and trust their audience enough to do something wild.

Bossa Nova, the new Bourke Street venue from Con Christopoulos (French Saloon, Kafeneion) and Victor Liong (Lee Ho Fook), very much feels like something born of a drunken late-night conversation between a couple of friends. And whether that’s actually how it happened, I’m here for the resulting absurdity.

Sushi train! With a Brazilian theme! And martinis! A wine list that’s 100 per cent half bottles! It’s so nonsensical that it almost comes back around to making sense.

Bossa Nova is a welcome measure of weirdness for this great restaurant town. 

Speaking of coming around, the things that come around this conveyor belt – which was imported from Taiwan and fits perfectly into the small space – are pretty exciting.

This is particularly true in a city with a major gap in the middle ground of sushi – we have lots of cheap stuff and now plenty of fancy omakase-style restaurants, but little in between. Plates, which cost between $4.80 and $12, might arrive bearing lovely supple surf clam nigiri, or tiny raw prawns, sweet, creamy and fresh.

The Brazilian theme is subtle, mainly showing up in a fantastic spicy tuna-like situation: two wide pieces of sushi roll with deep red raw tuna and a spice mix that includes a saffron topping.

The quality of the fish here is exceptional, especially given the obvious potential for plates to go unsold – most sushi trains use fish that’s not nearly as expensive to give away to staff at the end of the night (which is what Liong tells me they’re doing with any food that doesn’t get picked from the train after 90 minutes).

But there are things about Bossa Nova that still need to figuring out, and in some ways, I think the constraints of the space and the ambitions of the owners are at odds.

The cocktails are fantastic, particularly the caipirinha ($22), which is bursting with fresh lime. But they take forever to arrive, even when the place is fairly quiet.

There’s no real bar; just a station near the door for mixing drinks, and no dedicated bartender. In a place this small I understand why it’s set up this way, but if you’re going to offer drinks, you should probably be able to deliver them in a timely fashion.

The idea of a sushi train is that it’s basically self-serve, but that makes ordering drinks and things from the specials board difficult, and I’ve seen people get up from their seats to ask staff for everything from a spoon for their soup to a glass of water.

Some of the specials, cooked fresh by the kitchen, are absolutely worth ordering. I stopped by late one evening after an event in town and ate udon with pipis and seaweed butter ($39.50), a rich, salty masterpiece of fresh seafood and chewy noodles that tasted like the type of dish a chef might make for himself at the end of a long night.

Others are less successful. Grilled ox tongue ($32) looked lovely all lined up in slices topped with a yuzu-heavy relish, but was cooked rare and as a result was so chewy it was almost impossible to eat.

Bossa Nova is super fun, and by far the best accessible sushi in town. (By accessible I mean affordable; I’ve eaten my brains out while dining here, drank well, and never spent more than $200 for two – it would be easier to spend far less and come away happy and full.)

It’s incredibly useful as a place for a quick, low-committal meal, a fun and interactive date spot, a place to go when you aren’t interested in theatrics or the pain of thinking ahead and just want to eat the things that appear in front of you and look good.

Some of the operational details need tweaking for it to become its best self. But even its second-to-best self is a delight, and a welcome measure of weirdness for this great restaurant town.