Just last year Mischa Tropp was still popping up around town via his dining series We Are Kerala, which earned the chef a dedicated following for his southern Indian cooking. An earlier stint at the Rochester Hotel and a lockdown project doing butter chicken sets had also garnered him buzz.

“It’s a way of learning and educating yourself by feeding a customer base that’s not necessarily as judgmental as when you own a restaurant,” he told Broadsheet earlier this year of the pop-ups that allowed him to test, trial and slowly build his rep.

Then he opened Toddy Shop – his debut diner specialising in home-style Keralan food – in Fitzroy late last year.

The laid-back spot draws on his mum’s cooking and dishes he discovered on trips through southern India. It was an instant hit and a turning point for Tropp who – alongside Enter Via Laundry ’s Helly Raichura, Saadi ’s Saavni Krishnan and Biji Dining ’s Harry Mangat – is part of a wave of celebrated chefs raising (and reshaping) the profile of Indian food in Melbourne.

Now, just 12 months on, he’s about to command a much bigger audience as he opens his second venue – the 150-person restaurant and sports bar Kolkata Cricket Club – at Crown. It’s quite a scene change, one set in motion only four months ago after a chat with his Kolkata Cricket Club business partner Dave Mackintosh, who is also a founding partner at Ides and Lee Ho Fook.

“They’re looking to reinvigorate their offering,” Tropp says of Crown. The collaboration brings his indie clout to a setting generally associated with dining empires like Rockpool , Spice Temple and Nobu , in a wider shake-up for the precinct that includes the arrival of Marmont , the Cali-cool restaurant from Grant Smillie (who’s also behind Ponyfish Island and Los Angeles hotspots EP & LP , Strings of Life and Grandmaster Recorders).

“The [Crown] team has been really great to work with,” Tropp says. “So any [trepidation] that was there quickly dissipated. They’ve got a really good vision for what’s going to happen next year and they’re pushing hard on it.”

Tropp’s own vision for his Crown site arrived almost fully formed. Even prior to Toddy Shop he’d wanted to open a high-end Indian restaurant called Elsie, inspired by popular London diners like Dishoom and the two-Michelin-starred Gymkhana. “Overseas has done big Indian restaurants well for a long time, and Australia hasn’t really caught up to it. So this is an opportunity to do that.” He’s “taken the bones” of his would-be restaurant Elsie and rearranged them.

The result is the two-part Kolkata Cricket Club: a casual front bar where you can perch with a Kingfisher lager and catch a match while chefs pluck puffed naan off the charcoal-fired tandoor; and a white-tablecloth dining room that takes its cues from India’s elite members clubs (colonial spaces that were reclaimed by the Indian community during its Independence Movement in the 1940s).

The timber- and rattan-clad interior was designed by Tropp’s partner Min Chun Tseng, who’s also behind the fit-outs at Toddy Shop and Victor Liong’s Silk Spoon. The couple sourced custom wallpaper decorated with Indian date palms; block print orange lampshades they had made in Jaipur; and beautiful rattan and teak chairs, a replica of those found at Soho House in Mumbai.

“The restaurant here needs to do a lot of things: it needs to be a restaurant the Indian community can get behind. It also needs to be something the wider public can understand. So it was like, ‘How do we do both of those things?’ I think Kolkata Cricket Club is a nice in-between.”

The menu bridges the gap with a selection of smoky, fragrant regional Bengali dishes, as distinct from Tropp’s southern cooking at Toddy Shop and defined by the prevalence of mustard oil, white poppy seeds and seafood. Items include tandoor-baked barramundi; woodfired prawns smothered in a coconut and turmeric curry; the pani puri-esque puchka (crisp, hollow pastry filled with potatoes and chickpea curry); and a luscious goat curry with yoghurt and caramelised onions.

Plus, expect pan-Indian crowd-pleasers like tandoor-cooked kulcha stuffed with curried peas or saffron-braised duck; an elevated saag paneer with a slab of malai paneer made in-house with St David Dairy milk; and “the best butter chicken you’ve ever eaten” – all carted to the table on copper plates from India, and gold- and red-rimmed English china.

The drinks list, put together by Mackintosh, includes Victoria Bitter and a bespoke KCC lager made by Pirate Life on tap. Plus, inventive cocktails like the Kolkata Colada (with poppy seed and turmeric), the Beach Cricket (with vodka, Pimms, Cointreau, grapefruit and black tea) and Alok’s Old Fashioned (with date, cinnamon and black pepper). There’s also a page dedicated to Indian winemakers in Australia, including Victorian producers Lethbridge, Bindi and Avani.

Despite his access to a larger, broader market, Tropp’s intention for Kolkata Cricket Club remains simple: bringing community together for good old-fashioned Indian hospitality.

“For me this is about making something that tastes good, that makes people happy. It’s not about breaking out of a mould. Toddy Shop can do that. It’s about doing traditional Indian food well.”

Kolkata Cricket Club

Level One, Crown Melbourne, 8 Whiteman Street, Southbank

Hours :

Wed & Thu 5–10pm

Fri & Sat midday–11pm

Sun midday–9pm

kolkatacricketclub.com
@kolkatacricket__club