Tag Archives: Indian food

Bikanos Sweet And Curry Cafe

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 Shop 3/70 Watton St, Werribee. Phone: 8742 6450

Well within my lifetime Werribee will be folded quietly into metropolitan Melbourne.

On a sunny Friday afternoon, though, it has the feel of a bustling country town.

Except for the traffic congestion – that’s of big-smoke class already.

And the eateries – there’s far more cheap eats destinations than you’ll find in a similar-sized burg up-country, up-state.

It’s apparent Werribee hosts  significant Indian population. There’s groceries and eat shops, and a few restaurants that seem to be of the flash variety.

Happily, I snag a park right opposite my destination – Bikanos.

This is my first visit, but I’ve already set my mind on ordering a vegetarian thali, should there be one.

There is.

It costs $15,

What? I’ve seen thali prices of that order and more before, but only in the swankiest of operations. The $15 is about $4-5 more than I’m currently paying in and around Footscray.

A quick Plan B is required. Having noticed a number of photo display non-menu dishes in the front window, I inquire about the pricing of the chole bhature.

It’s $7.50, I am informed.

That’s more like it.

For variety’s sake, I also order a serve of onion bhaji ($5).

These aren’t quite as good as those we inhale at Vanakkam India, but get real close.

It’s a big serve; the batter is mostly ungreasy; and the onions are cooked through but maintain a nice degree of crunch beneath the batter. A gooey tamarind syrup accompanies.

Whatever wariness I harbour about the price of the thali is banished by the brilliance of my chick peas and fried bread.

This is the best, most awesome example I’ve had in these parts of this tremendous snack/breakfast dish.

It makes me very, very happy.

The creamy yogurt is spiced with flavours that I can’t identify but that are nevertheless tantalisingly familiar.

Bikanos boss man Ashok Bal subsequently tells me it’s a mix of garam masala, black salt and roast cumin. Yum!

My two bhatoora – a slightly heavier version of puris – are so fresh they are filled with air and look like tanned bladders. They are light and delicious.

The chick peas, too, are perfect – nicely al dente and residing in a gravy that is slightly salty and with a mild chilli kick.

Ashok tells me the seasoning is a matter of cinnamon, cloves, black cardamom, cumin, bay leaf, garlic ginger.

So fine is the magic of these three components that I completely ignore the raw onions shards and pickle. Maybe next time.

As I’ve enjoyed my late lunch, a succession of Indian locals have come and gone – this a popular haunt.

The shop has a display of fine and fancy looking Indian sweets. Appealing, but I inevitably find them too rich for mine.

I do wish I’d grabbed, before departing for Geelong, a small bag of the spiced cashews arrayed with other savoury snacks.

Maybe next time.

Bikanos on Urbanspoon

Hyderabad Inn

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551 Barkly St, West Footscray. Phone: 9689 0998

We’re surprised how many folks assume that because we’ve embarked on a food blog that we’re eating out more than ever.

That’s simply not the case – we’re just doing what we’ve always done, which means we dine out three, maybe four times a week.

I’ll concede that’s more than most people do – even in the cheap as chips west – but it hardly seems excessive to us.

The highlight, though, is always Saturday lunch – work/school done with, chores/shopping performed, it’s time to get on the fang with relish. So to speak …

This Saturday we are delighted to have our buddy Kurt along for the ride.

He broke his ankle a few weeks back, and has been experiencing varying degrees of pain, discomfort and inconvenience ever since, so we’re chuffed to get him out and about for a few hours.

Even better, this is his first dosa experience – and we’re thrilled it turns out be an excellent one.


We’d been keeping an eye on this place, half a video store refurbished, for a couple of weeks, waiting for it to open – ever since Bennie noticed the new signage.

In fact, we’d turned up a few days previously only to find it was their first day and they wouldn’t be opening until 5pm.

Happily, another new place – Wok Noodle – was a more than adequate stand-in on that day.

But it’s all on at Hyderabad Inn for Saturday lunch!

This is a nice, big room, tastefully kitted out in a somewhat spartan fashion – which suits us fine.

Unlike so many other places that serve doas, idlys, vadas and the like, this is a full-service Indian restaurant.

The menu boasts a full range of curries, tandoori dishes, Indo-Chinese tucker and so on. Most curries are priced around the $11 mark.


But we’re here for the south Indian goodies. They suit our budget better, we like the flavours and textures, and a fully satisfying meal doesn’t leave us feeling full … as in over-full.

There’s a wide range of dosas, uttapams and the like from which to choose – including a variety of combos.

Kurt goes for the Dosa Deal – dosa of choice (chicken in this case), one apiece of idly and vada, sambar, the usual coconutty sides and a can of soft drink.

This is an outstanding deal for $9.95.

The crumbly minced chicken is delicious, the vada doughnut is unique of flavour and surprisingly soft on the tooth, and the whole deal, including the sambar and coconut chutneys, is a delight. The idly, served on a separate plate, is less to Kurt’s fancy at first … but it, too, disappears in due course.

Bennie and I order the Chef’s Dosa ($10.50) and a lamb biryani ($10.50).

The Chef’s Dosa is stuffed with the same chicken and also separate portions of equally crumbly lamb, spiced paneer with coriander and the usual spuds. It’s all great, with the potatoes more gooey than found in your average masala dosa – almost like a stew.

I’ve never seen Bennie enjoy a dosa more.


The biryani is fine, if not quite meeting the same top-shelf standards as the rest of our order. Embedded in the spicy rice are fried onion strands and three tender portions of lamb on the bone, while the dish is rounded out by a lovely hard-boiled egg, runny raita and a gravy that also seems to have a high coconut quotient.

Cheap Indian food can sometimes mean cheap service.

Such is emphatically not the case at Hyderabad Inn – and that alone seems to make its chances of prospering, in what is becoming an ultra-competitive neighbourhood, very good.

We’ll be back for sure!

Hyderaabad inn on Urbanspoon

Hyderabad Inn website here.


Dosa Hut

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604 Barkly St, West Footscray. Phone: 9687 0171

Dosa Hut, as far as I’m aware, was the first to bring dosas and the like to our part of the world – and for that I’ll be forever grateful.

For the past year or so, it fell out of favour with us, and by then there were other places to get our dosa fix – most notably,  Vanakkam India.

The reasons we moved on from Dosa Hut were simple – in its earlier days the place had a makeshift ambiance that made us feel a little ill at ease. It was a bit like we felt we were sitting amid hurried preparations for an eatery that was soon to open – rather than enjoying one that was already up and running.

As well, the service had a sort of distracted air about it.

Following a Thursday night foray, I’m very happy to report that Dosa Hut has changed – for the better.

The place has had a low-key fit-out that makes it seem much more welcoming. There’s an extended menu that takes in not just dosas, idlys, vadas and biryani of various stripes, but also noodles, uttapam, omelettes, a range of snacks and even a modest list of Indo-Chinese dishes.

There’s even a display cabinet to one side of the servery filled with fine-looking Indian sweets.

As well, the service could not be more efficient or smiling. I wasn’t counting, but I reckon I received my dosa about five minutes after ordering.

Here and elsewhere I have experimented with various dosa types – variations including onion, cheese, egg, chick, lamb and so on.

But for me, and countless others no doubt, masala dosa is the king.

My Dosa Hut masala dosa ($7.50) was beaut.

Every element of it was fine – crispy pancake, potato stuffing laced with mustard seeds and curry leaves, sambar and two chutneys, one that seemed to be tomato/chilli-based and the other of creamy coconut.

A warning though: All three accompaniments had a degree of chilli hit about them, even the usually cooling coconut number. Nothing to worry most anyone used to eating out in the west, but their combined heat might be a little too incendiary for kids.

It’s real nice knowing Dosa Hut has become a place we’ll be returning to again.

In the meantime, things are changing in Barkly Village.

Opposite Dosa Hut, what used to be an old-style pizza/pasta joint is now a swish new thin-crust genuine Italian pizza place called Gusto On Barkly that is Very High on our “to do” list.

And a bit further down the road towards Footscray proper, what was once half a video rental establishment is soon to become another dosa/biryani outfit!

Oh happy day!

Salaam Namaste Dosa Hut on Urbanspoon

Classic Curry Restaurant

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Shop 3, Clarke St, Sunshine. Phone: 9312 6766

More recent Classic Curry reviewcan be read here.

After being a long-time if irregular customer of the original Classic Curry in Elizabeth St, near Vic Market, I decided it was high time I checked out the newer sister joint in Sunshine.

The premises were just the first of several pleasant surprises I was to embrace in the course of my Saturday lunch.

The room is big, airy, bright and welcoming.

It’s more like a restaurant proper, as opposed to the rather dim, dowdy backpacker vibe of the city place.

The prices at both, however, are significantly lower than your more formal, starched Indian places – on quite a long menu, the only items over $10 are two prawn dishes, a whole tandoori chook and the “Meat Lover Thali”. All the vego mains are $8 and the meat mains $9.

In the interests of variety for review purposes, I ordered the vegetarian thali.

I did so with some trepidation.

My standard order over the years, when I’ve hit the Elizabeth St branch, has become half a tandoori chook (three pieces, with salad trimmings) and one of the stuffed breads.

The thalis I’ve had from there have invariably ranged from passable to awful, the latter featuring tired, overcooked servings.

My fear in Sunshine proved completely unfounded – and then some.

The food had freshness and zing that I don’t normally associate with budget Indian eateries – be they serving food a la carte, on a thali or from a bain marie.

It was all delicious and I wiped every last drop with the nann that arrived as part of the $9 deal.


I’ve long had an aversion to main meals of any genre/ethnicity that have truck with:

1. Sweetness.

2. Cashews.

3. Cheese.

The portion shahi paneer in my thali has put paid to that habit. It was awesome, the tomato gravy given a depth and richness from the chashews, the cheese nice and chewy – kinda like fried tofu.

The dal was made from several pulses – aduki and red beans included. It was the spiciest serving I had, the mildish chilli hit matching the smoothness and flavour of the gravy-like stew.

The aloo gobi was fine, too, its dryness offering a nice contrast to its two colleagues and the cauliflower and spuds retaining  nice level of bite.

This was one of the best thalis I’ve had for quite a while.

And given the clever matching of textures, flavours and seasoning across the three dishes, I couldn’t see me ordering either of the two non-vegetarian thalis … knowing they’d almost certainly include OK-but-dull lamb/chicken curry, or even the over-rated and to-be-avoided butter chicken.

This is a cool place and well worth the drive to Sunshine. It could even become our Indian default setting.

Check out the Classic Curry website here.

Classic Curry on Urbanspoon

Vanakkam India

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198 Nicholson St, Footscray. Phone: 9687 2233

We warmly recommend Vanakkam India.

However, we also recommend judicious parsing of the menu and consulting the staff.

Vanakkam India is a low-key Indian cafe, neat and tidy and smartly priced, along the same lines as Kitchen Samrat and Indi Hots.

The biryanis – including quite a often a goat number – are popular with the joint’s Indian customers.

But we find them a bit too spicy for us.

Likewise, some of the many curries we’ve tried – mostly just below or just over $10  – have been too highly spiced for us.

We’ve tried a couple of the Indo-Chinese dishes – chicken noodles and chicken fried rice – but found them dull. Maybe the Indo-Chinese appetisers – such as chilli gobi, ginger gobi or chilli baby corn – are where it’s at with that aspect of the menu.

What we do love is the onion baji ($4.95).

To describe this dish as deep-fried onion rings simply does it a grave disservice.

Onion rings are dipped in a besan flour batter, fried, lightly seasoned with finely ground pepper and served with a lemon wedge.

They are pure magic, light and surprisingly grease-free.

Next time, I suspect, when Bennie and I hit this place together, two serves of onion baji will avoid unseemly haste and arguments over the last fragments and crumbs.

This is food to inhale with gusto!

Having come a cropper on some other dishes at Vanakkam India, this place has become our preferred dosa destination.

Usually we opt for the masala dosa ($7.95), or sometimes the chicken tika masala dosa ($8.95), which is the same potato-stuffed pancake laced with chopped pieces of tandoori chook.

The dosas and the side dishes are as good as any in the area, and the service and ambience better than some who do the dosa boogie. So we love Vanakkam India for that alone.

For this Saturday lunch, though, and flying solo, I get a bit more adventurous.

I order the nimmak’aya pappu, which is described as “Spicy tangy lentil finished with lemon juice”.

Besides consisting of yellow split peas, it’s beaut and does have a lemony tang, but the serve seems a little on the modest side for the $8.95 price tag.

I also order the roti masala ($4.95) – “Roti stuffed with curry mashed potato”.

This is a disappointment – mainly because the bread itself is of the same variety as the ones we get from our local IGA, and is thus a bit lifeless and greasy. Maybe at these prices, it’s a bit, ahem, rich to expect everything to made in-house. And, indeed, I have no philosophical objection to the use of store-bought or pre-made products being served in the kinds of eateries we frequent.

But if I’d known, I’d have stuck with out dosa routine!

The potato stuffing is the same mix that does the honours in the dosas – turmeric, curry leaves, mustard seeds, perfect.

So, yes, Vanakkam India has been a bit hit-and-miss for us.

But the menu is long and there’s more to explore – such as the Indian pizzas, which include yara uthappam (“uthappam spread with cooked prawns and special spice mix”) and kaju uthappam (“uthappam topped with special spice mix an cashew nuts”), both $11.95. Or egg masala (“whole boiled eggs combined with rich onion”) for $7.95.

In the meantime the dosas – there are 28 varieties on the menu – are consistently the go.

And the onion baji is among our most very cherished western suburbs dishes.

Vanakkam on Urbanspoon

Saturday in the ‘hood

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Outstanding channa and puris, $7; shame about the plastic cutlery and ozone-rotting container.

Asian dog? Oh man, I gotta try me one of those!

Little Saigon Market.

Cavallaro’s

Babylon Restaurant.

Coffee and baklava at Babylon, $4.