“Everything I do is elevated drinking food,” Geoff Marett, the new head chef at Hot-Listed Benchwarmer, tells Broadsheet. “Always changing. Super tasty. Fun, not pretentious.”

Marett is best known in Melbourne for Nama, a Japanese pop-up series he co-founded with Raphael Hyams and Caelan O’Rourke, and its signature ebi toast. He honed his yakitori skills at Hong Kong’s Michelin-starred yakitori izakaya Yardbird, but the new Benchwarmer dishes are uniquely his. “My background is Cantonese, I’m trained in Japanese, so my food has that Japanese-Cantonese-in-Australia style.”

Marett draws from this varied background to create vibrant riffs on familiar classics, including an XO lamb crumpet with yuzu labneh, hot honey and pickles; and sake clams with miso butter, lap cheong and dill. They’re all paired with beers from the massive Benchwarmer selection, matched by owner Lachie Jones. “He’s a genius,” says Marett. The North Melbourne beer hall also collaborated with Mr Banks brewery to create the house Oishii Dry yuzu lager, designed to complement Marett’s izakaya-style menu.

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Marett is now kicking off a Sunday yakitori special. “It’ll be a tradition, like Sunday roast, but Sunday sticks,” Marett says. It’s also a nod to both his Yardbird experience and Benchwarmer’s former chef Keng-Hao “Kenny” Chiu, who started cooking yakitori at the laid-back North Melbourne beer hall and is now behind Prahran Market’s popular Matsuyama pop-up.

We caught up with Marett about how he’s settled into the new digs, the luxury of having most of his ingredients a mere six-minute walk away and why he’ll never DIY the bread and crumpets.

How did you get started in the industry?
When I left school, I started working for a catering company. Twelve years ago, I flew to Japan for 10 days, next thing I knew I was there for two years. I couldn’t speak Japanese in the beginning, so I did random jobs to get by, worked as a bartender and helped open a whisky bar in Hokkaido. I went back to Tokyo and started running my own pop-ups. I was doing banh mi because I couldn’t find good banh mi in Tokyo.

Tell us about your time at Yardbird.
When I left Japan in 2015, I wanted to work for Yardbird in Hong Kong. I was there for five years. You have to start from the bottom and work your way up … When I first started cooking there, I was cutting cabbage for 6 months. Wasn’t allowed to move on to anything else. It’s definitely where I got my proper passion for hospo and restaurants. Really inspirational. The owners and managers were my mentors. Biggest things I learned were not just in the kitchen, but also the service, marketing, branding. The food is incredible, but how they do things there is so well branded and thought out. Casual, but capable.

How did your time at Yardbird influence what you’re cooking now?
Yardbird taught me respect for traditions – and to have your own take on them. There were a lot of twists. And it taught me you don’t need to go all-out and make every single thing. A lot of places in Melbourne are making flatbread and dough. Yardbird was just getting bread from the professionals. [At Benchwarmer], we use Breadtop and support local makers like Holy Crumpets.

What dishes are you excited for people to try?
Definitely the XO lamb crumpet. Using a crumpet and making it savoury is something different. We use local Holy Crumpets, deep-fry them so they’re crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside.

For mains, pork cheek with gochujang glaze. It’s inspired by char siu pork. It’s glossy and charred, with wasabi verde – parsley, tarragon, basil, vinegar, oil, salt, pepper, wasabi, blitzed till smooth – on the side.

What have you changed at Benchwarmer since coming on?
I made it so our suppliers are almost entirely from Queen Vic Market. My favourite thing about cheffing is going to the market and seeing what’s best. Instead of ordering off an app [for produce], I can walk six minutes, check out what’s really good and create that close relationship. You get great things cheaper because you’re also dealing with smaller businesses who won’t do deliveries. They’ll give you the best of the day. It’s amazing for the specials board and yakitori – the hearts, all the goodies you wouldn’t find. It’s inspiring, but I feel like a lot of chefs don’t have this time.

Where does your creative inspiration for dishes come from?
The favourite dishes I’ve ever created, like the crumpet, are always nostalgic with a story. Like Benchwarmer’s Filet-o-Fish special. Look at the original. The concept is beautiful: how do we make it good? Panko-crumbed rockling. Takana tartare, cheese that’s torched, pickles on top, brush a Breadtop dinner roll with confit garlic butter.