A Bhang-ing menu!

If there’s one thing being locked away at home for almost a year taught me, it’s that I love dining out. Sure, cooking for yourself is cheaper and more gratifying (allegedly), but my culinary skills probably won’t ever reach the level of a restaurant quality meal.

Come 2021, and I find myself more excited than ever to explore Brunswick’s best bites out. If you read my previous article, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of kebabs, HSPs, and McDonald’s at certain hours of the night. However, those were my university days – I now possess a slightly more sophisticated palette and slightly more money in my bank account.

So, one night recently after a long week at work, I caught up for dinner with Bridgit, one of my oldest and dearest friends. We had tickets to see Sam Taunton at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival later in the evening. Dinner and a show felt like a novelty.

After the show, we had dinner at Bhang, a modern Indian cuisine restaurant on Mitchell St – slightly off Sydney Road, so nice and secluded from the night-time bustle of Brunswick’s main drag. The interior is funky and sleek. Imagine a combination of traditional Indian furnishing, and Melbourne’s hole-in-the-wall aesthetic. The restaurant is named for an Indian form of edible marijuana, but trust me, you won’t be needing any substances here. The food is just that good. 

1/2A Mitchell St, Brunswick (source: Bhang)

To start, we ordered cocktails. I’m not usually one for cocktails, but the drinks menu was so different from your usual selection that I had to try. Bridgit ordered me the Colaba Causeway, which is an orange and turmeric drink (she ordered this because of a running joke we have about the time I cooked her pasta, and added way, way too much turmeric). But, despite past turmeric trauma, it was a great drink and a great price too. I would recommend these drinks for those who don’t like overly sweet and sugary cocktails, as the orange and turmeric were tangy and pleasant. I find that sweet drinks clash with dinner, so a more mature drink matched perfectly.   

Now, next came the food. I am unfortunately someone who usually orders butter chicken at Indian restaurants, but Bhang does not have this staple dish on their menu. Instead, they have much more. It was hard to go beyond the share plate dishes, so we ordered the chicken tikka cooked two ways, momos, and garlic naan. I had never had momos before, but they were beautiful, melt in your mouth lamb dumplings. I believe that when at restaurants, you should order food you couldn’t cook yourself, and there’s no chance I could recreate these flavours in the lamb. The chicken was served with generous amounts of sauce and cooked in a flavoursome combination of spices – definitely a dish I couldn’t recreate myself.  

The service was also top-notch from the talent hospitality team at Bhang.  At dinner, I must have been telling an incredibly interesting story, because I remember throwing my hands out and accidentally throwing my fork halfway across the room. Amazingly, a wonderful waiter replaced my fork immediately. As soon as the fork hit the ground, he picked it up, and replaced my fork with a clean one so I could continue eating. He even laughed off the incident with me. Was he psychic? Could he predict my fork-throwing incident? Nevertheless, I was very grateful and impressed.

Bhang-ing menu! (source: Bhang)

And so concludes my review of Bhang. There were so many other dishes at Bhang I would love to try, so I’ll definitely be going back. Leave a comment if you have a favourite dish at Bhang, or if there are any other restaurants in Brunswick you would like to recommend to Brunswick Daily. Happy dining!