A Firedoor Alum Returns With Kolkata Social, Swapping Fine Plates for Punchy Bengali Comfort Food

It’s not every day a dish stops you in your tracks. But that’s what happened when Broadsheet visited Kolkata Social and tried the smoked fish. The barramundi fillet is perfect – robust yet tender, with a crisp skin – served half-submerged in a deeply flavoured smoked yoghurt broth laced with tangy mustard oil. Yes, chef Ahana Dutt’s modern Bengali menu offers plenty of delicious choice, but the fish is a showstopper.

It’s a fixture at the Newtown (and newest) restaurant from Plate It Forward, Shaun Christie-David’s social enterprise hospitality group, where Dutt joined as head chef.

Dutt has a fine dining background, with the lauded Firedoor and the excellent, short-lived Raja on her CV, but it’s her West Bengal hometown and her mum Sharmila Basu Thaur’s cooking that’s at the heart of the Kolkata Social menu. “Mum raised me by herself,” she tells Broadsheet. “Everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned from her. Honouring her felt like the right thing to do.”

The menu is a primer in Bengali cooking, from on-the-bone spiced goat kosha and chicken in kata moshla’r jhol (a garlicky chilli coconut broth) to the “plastic chutney”, a condiment of sliced green papaya cooked till translucent, scented with panch phoron spice mix. Some dishes are mild, like the yellow dahl that comes with a side of fine, crisp angel-hair potatoes. Others are punchy, like the lentil-stuffed zucchini served in a deep red, tomato-based sauce with an almost forceful heat. Not to worry though, a ginger spritz soothes and readies the tongue for another bite.

Dutt’s sunshine-hued favourite comes at the end of the meal: a slice of golden pound cake topped with saffron cream and sweet mangoes.

“When I was a kid, we had a massive 16-seat dining table painted duck egg blue. I remember my mum mixing the batter there, letting me lick the spoon. I would wait for the cake to bake in our tiny oven; the room filled with the smell of vanilla and butter.

“Baking creates a kind of nostalgia a lot of people feel. There’s a shared experience with food that lets you welcome people to your culture.”

Guests to the restaurant are greeted not only by the team of chefs in the maroon-tiled open kitchen and the charming space where stained-glass windows look out to South King Street, but by Basu Thaur herself, who only learned about her daughter’s restaurant a few days ago. “She’s visiting from Kolkata,” Dutt says. “I didn’t tell her about the restaurant. She came for the first time the other day; the whole thing was a surprise. She was shocked, but I think she’s proud and happy.”

Watching the matriarch talking to customers, it’s clear she’s in her element as a host. She stops by a table to ask about the food. “This lentil dahl is classical Bengali comfort food,” she says, resplendent in a deep purple dress and matching bindi. “After a long trip, you might come home, have a shower and eat some dahl.”

Even though Basu Thaur isn’t a permanent fixture – she returns to Kolkata at the end of March – her spirit of hospitality is embedded in the restaurant and its sister venues: Colombo Social, Kabul Social, Kyiv Social. Around 80 per cent of the group’s workforce is female, many of them migrants and refugees working their first jobs in Australia. Each time a customer buys a set menu, the group donates two meals (one in Sydney and one overseas) to those in need.

“If what we do makes a difference in even one person’s life, that’s a big deal,” Dutt says. “[Supporting those in need] is something we should do. It doesn’t take a lot.”

Kolkata Social
528 King Street, Newtown

Hours:
Wed to Fri 5.30pm–10.30pm
Sat & Sun midday–3pm, 5.30pm–10.30pm

plateitforward.org.au/kolkata-social
@kolkatasocial_