Forget butter chicken: The South Asian bars, pop-ups and bakeries changing Sydney dining

From an Indian chicken shop in Newtown to a Milo masala Messina colab, a new generation of chefs and home cooks, led by Good Food Guide Trailblazer Ahana Dutt, are pushing back on stereotypes.Ahana Dutt, winner of the Good Food Guide Bill Granger Trailblazer Award.Sitthixay DitthavongWhen chef Ahana Dutt moved from India to Australia in 2014, it felt like Sydney had the most cutting-edge culinary scene in the world, she said. New York chef David Chang had opened Momofuku Seiobo, chef Neil Perry was celebrating 25 years of Rockpool, and Argentinian steakhouse Porteno had become a bona fide celebrity hotspot, welcoming the likes of Anthony Bourdain and Jamie Oliver.Bengali food was not on the menu, however. Sydney had no shortage of Indian restaurants, but Dutt struggled to find one that felt like home. She hadn’t grown up in Delhi, where butter chicken shot to popularity in the ’50s; or Goa, where Portuguese influence led to vindaloo curry. Rather, she was from West Bengal, an eastern state known for its characteristic blend of spices, mustard-heat and river-caught seafood. “I dreamt of opening my own Indian restaurant,” Dutt said. “When you move to a different country, you want to be able to represent your culture and cook your own food.”Bazaar & Bar in Brookvale.Jennifer SooRestaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.Sign upAt the time, that dream felt far from reach. But after a decade in some of Australia’s most renowned kitchens, including six years at Firedoor in Surry Hills, Dutt is now the owner-operator of Kolkata Social in Newtown – a Bengali restaurant with Sydney sensibilities, where native Davidson plums become chutney for spiced barramundi shingara and retired Meredith Dairy goats are braised in dark curry sauce. Butter chicken is not on the menu. It may be India’s most popular culinary export, but one dish cannot capture the depth and diversity of a food scene that stretches across 28 states and eight territories, Dutt argued in a June opinion piece for Good Food.Dutt’s conviction led to recognition from The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide in October, when she received the Bill Granger Trailblazer Award for challenging local diners’ understanding of what Indian cuisine is and can be. It also positioned her at the forefront of a growing movement of South Asian migrants determined to preserve their culinary heritage in their own contemporary way. Among them is Anglo-Indian chef Brendan King, who plans to expand the definition of the suburban chicken shop with the opening of Tommy’s Decent Chicken in Enmore this month; restaurateur Kabir Arora, who works with chef Adwait Jagtap to serve regional cuisine at the Northern Beaches’ first Indian wine bar Bazaar and Bar (Brookvale), which scored a spot in the Guide’s 100 Essential Restaurants list alongside Kolkata Social; and Tavishi Khanna and Abhimanyu Garg, who developed a repertoire of hard-to-find regional dishes at their Rouse Hill restaurant Veranda. The half tandoori chicken plate at Derrel’s, Brendan King’s previous opening in Camperdown..Jennifer SooJagtap and Garg, who travelled to Australia for their studies, moved into hospitality for the express purpose of bringing regional Indian dishes to Sydney. Though the Indian-born population is now the second-largest migrant community in Australia, second only to the United Kingdom, Garg found most Indian restaurants still limit their food to one or two regions.“We wanted to provide dishes which we have grown up eating, which just isn’t available,” said Garg. “There are so many second-generation kids who don’t even recognise it as Indian food because of the lack of representation.”Bhavna Kalra Shivalkar, founder of cooking school The Modern Desi, said young migrants such as Garg and Japtap have come to Australia with a different culinary mindset than their predecessors. Vinay Matta, who grew up in and around his parents’ Double Bay restaurant, Jewel on the Bay, has followed a similar path with Rasa House on New South Head Road.‘We will keep showing up, holding ground on things that matter and building something honest.’Ahana Dutt, Kolkata Social“They’ve come from an India that has evolved so much, where the food scene is just so diverse and people are trying new things,” Shivalkar said.“MasterChef India had a huge impact – people go on and want to showcase dishes from their part of the country, talking about these beautiful, underrated cuisines from Assam or Odisha. There’s pride in it, and that pride has come to Australia.”Veranda aims to include one signature dish from each state in India by leaning on the generational expertise of customers and their families. It recently debuted kosha mangsho, a Bengali goat dish requiring seven hours of preparation.“I’m excited there are more people doing regional South Asian cuisine,” said Dutt. “That’s pivotal to changing the narrative.”King, the former chef and founder of Camperdown diner Derrel’s, wants to directly challenge stereotypes – why shouldn’t a chicken shop sell tandoori chicken, for example, as Tommy’s will? “How do we highlight those stereotypes and spin it?” he said. “It’s about … uplifting Indian cuisine and making it more fun, more playful.”Bangladeshi home-cook Nazmun Naher Shishir prepares food for TableTok supper club.Oscar ColmanPop-up supper club TableTok became an online sensation this year as home cook and recent university graduate Nazmun Naher Shishir invited strangers into private spaces to connect over Bengali dishes. Most guests had never tried food from Bangladesh before, Shishir said, but that’s what made it meaningful: “When you don’t know about something, you get sceptical about it, and that’s why it’s amazing to see people … [who] have all come from different countries.“We’re all trying to make this place our home.”King said it felt like South Asian dining was “going to pop over the next couple of years”. Owner-baker Anirban Chanda at Another Whisk stall in Kirribilli, SydneyGeorge ChanMomentum is building. Over the past month, Diet Paratha, a global online community for South Asian culture, featured the Sydney diaspora in a photographic documentary series; Darlinghurst festival Surplus showcased South Asian DJs, food and fashion at ChorBazaar; and former Great Australian Bake Off contestant Anirban Chanda announced the December launch of Another Whisk, a bakery serving mango saffron cake and Bengal date basque cheesecake in Marrickville. Former MasterChef Australia winner and Everything is Indian cookbook author Justin Narayan said third-culture kids, who grew up eating their mum’s dosa and their school tuckshop’s meat pies, have become a force for change.“The Trailblazer Award is a reflection of that story getting out,” he said. “There are more role models, providing more examples of what [South Asian food] can be, so there’s more confidence to express ourselves.”There was a time when Narayan was hesitant to modernise dishes, but now he creates recipes for Milo masala chai (launched as an ice-cream special at Gelato Messina this week) and cardamom caramel slice. Shishir, too, has started to play around with recipes, adding kangaroo to Bengali-style korma at TableTok.Gayathiri Manoharan (Table at Gaya’s) at her four-week pop-up at Superfreak, Marrickville.Devika SuriFor Gayathiri Manoharan (Table at Gaya’s), that meant making anchovy vadai and tamarind mignonette to spoon over Sydney rock oysters during her four-week pop-up at Night Service, the Friday night aperitif session by Ryan Menner (The Oyster Stand) and Mike Ico at Superfreak.“It’s actually a beautiful way to connect people to Tamil Sri Lankan food and showcase the food from Jaffna, where I grew up,” she said. “It’s been healing … I often think about the privilege I have here and how life would have been different … and I’ve realised these collabs are a way of me standing up and showing up, for me and my people.”Kolkata Social’s Ahana Dutt.It’s those people willing to share their heritage, and fill Sydney’s culinary gaps, that will grow the story of South Asian cuisine, said Dutt.“I don’t know what the next year will bring, but I do know we will keep showing up, holding ground on things that matter and building something honest,” she said.The winners of the 42nd Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide Awards, presented by Oceania Cruises and T2 Tea, were announced on Monday, October 26.The home of the Good Food Guide, the app is free for premium subscribers of The Sydney Morning Herald and also available as a standalone subscription. 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