Sydney is set to welcome a new restaurant tomorrow from Plate It Forward Hospitality Group, with Kolkata Social opening its doors on Newtown’s King Street.
The restaurant has snagged top talent Ahana Dutt as its head chef, who spent several years working alongside Lennox Hastie at Firedoor. The opportunity to lead the new venue was a fortuitous event for the chef, who grew up in Kolkata and departed Raja in Potts Point last year after its closure.
Read more about the chef here.
Dutt has been working with the hospitality group for the last six months, spending time developing a menu inspired by traditional recipes she grew up eating as well as completing 888 hours of training and mentorship with refugee and asylum-seeker women.
“I wanted the menu to represent me,” says the chef. “It was a way for me to introduce people to Bengali food through recipes that I’ve grown up with. I wanted to show people that Bengali food is Indian food, as well as the corollary that Indian food is more than butter chicken and naan. The food at Kolkata social is a way for me to not only hold on to but celebrate my heritage in a different country.”
Launch plates include paturi, spiced ricotta wrapped in banana leaf; smoked barramundi fried in mustard oil served with yoghurt, cardamom, and green chilli; and radhabollobhi, fried flatbread with a spiced lentil filling.
There’s also a set menu available, which will see two meals donated to those in need in Sydney and in India.
Beverage highlights cover a spiked lassi, a collaborate Kolkata lager made with Mountain Culture, and a mini mustard martini.
“We want people to leave happy, but with also a better idea of what Bengali/Indian food is,” says Dutt.
The group will prioritise hiring women, which make up 80 per cent of its workforce as well as those who are “often excluded from the job market”, says Founder Shaun Christie-David. “Like all our venues, social impact is deeply embedded into all aspects.”
Kolkata Social will operate Wednesday to Friday from 5:30pm and on weekends from midday.
