“It’s the Indian that you’ve always wanted to eat,” chef Mischa Tropp says of the food at his upcoming Crown venue Kolkata Cricket Club.

The Toddy Shop chef has developed a menu that’s “completely different” to what you’ll find at his Fitzroy spot. “Expect classics, and a range of traditional Bengali dishes,” Tropp says. Here he walks us through four of the dishes you’ll find when the white-tablecloth restaurant opens on Saturday December 7.

Chingri malaikari

Tropp: “Chingri” just means prawn, so it’s prawn malaikari. Malaikari is one of the few coconut dishes of Bengal. It’s onions that have been caramelised until they’re almost a caramel, with Kashmiri chilli, turmeric, coconut milk and mustard oil. It’s this incredibly rich, fragrant coconut milk curry. We’re going to do wood-fire prawns and serve them with the curry.

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Honestly, I always love cooking this prawn curry. I’ve cooked it at Avani a bunch of times – that’s where I developed it – and it’s something that I’ve been doing for a few years now and it’s always meant to be on a restaurant menu; I’ve just never quite had the right place for it.

Puchka

It’s like the Bengali version of pani puri. Puri is a fried wheat pastry, like a hollow ball that’s super crispy. It’s a wheat dough that’s quite dry, then it’s deep-fried and it puffs up. The filling is Kolkata potatoes, kala chana – which is like a brown chickpea curry – and honey.

Saag Paneer

[It’s served with different] pani depending on what’s in season. In winter, it’ll be spinach and nettle. In summer, it might be spinach and mustard oil or spinach and fenugreek – it’ll always be a mix of greens. And then there’s malai paneer – a paneer made with a mixture of cream and milk. We use really high-quality St David Dairy for all our paneer, butter chicken and so on.

Butter chicken

At the end of the day, it’s butter chicken. It’s still going to be the butter chicken that everyone knows. But it’s attention to detail – it’s really good quality butter. It’s good quality cream. It’s the process, making sure that all the tandoori chicken is cooked over charcoal. All of those things turn out a butter chicken that’s richer, not so sweet, nicely spiced and well balanced.