Secretive restaurant Enter Via Laundry will soon add a bar – and a front door
This bold Indian restaurant has always had an air of mystery. But owner Helly Raichura is about to pull back the curtain and invite guests in for a drink.
Melbourne’s supper-club-style Indian restaurant, Enter Via Laundry, has evolved from intimate weekly dinners at its owner’s home to a 20-seat restaurant in Carlton North, where you still arrive through a rear entrance.
Now it’s about to step out of the shadows, with plans to convert the front room into a small bar serving snacks and Indian-inspired cocktails.
It’s a significant departure from the clandestine operating style of the restaurant, which has no signage and curtained windows on its Nicholson Street frontage.
“There is a lot of curiosity among our neighbours of what this secretive place is,” says owner Helly Raichura.
It’s also the first time that Enter Via Laundry will be accessible without a booking.
Once renovations are complete in what’s currently known as “the yellow dining room”, 10 to 12 people will be able to drop into the bar for a brief taste of Raichura’s cooking, which melds native Australian ingredients with regional Indian recipes.
Raichura devotes her set menus to one region at a time. Right now, the menu focuses on dishes from Kerala, especially those cooked by its Muslim and Christian communities.
In the bar, she’ll offer about five snacks and one dessert, many of them drawn from previous menus. There’ll be rissois – a Goan croquette – filled with smoked pork; monji gaade, a Kashmiri snack of fried fish in a spiced coating; and patra poda, spiced prawns steamed in nasturtium leaf.
“Everyone loves that. People can come and have it anytime now,” says Raichura.
Cocktails combining Indian and Australian ingredients might include a White Russian-inspired drink of vodka washed with toasted macadamia and kaapi, Indian filter coffee. Wines will be selected by sommelier Ben Knight (ex-Vue de Monde), who also wrote the restaurant’s wine list, and has “complete creative liberty to pitch whatever he thinks”.
While renovations are under way, Raichura will continue to serve tasting menus in the midnight-blue dining room at the rear of Enter Via Laundry. They range in price from $122 for five courses to $212 for between 12 and 16 dishes. The entryway lounge area will become a second dining room.
Enter Via Laundry joins fellow Nicholson Street restaurant Scopri in opening a spin-off bar. Scopri’s Bar Olo is set to open this month.
Enter Via Laundry’s bar will open by April on Nicholson Street, Carlton North, entervialaundry.com.au
Emma Breheny – Emma is Good Food's Melbourne-based reporter and co-editor of The Age Good Food Guide 2024.