Deep in the Melbourne suburbs (I can’t say where), you’ll find one of the city’s most in-demand dining destinations.
It’s a private supper club for just 12 diners a night, with a waitlist 20,000-people long.
Guests are treated to a dining journey unlike anything else you’re likely to find in Australia, probably because its creator isn’t like anyone else I’ve ever met.
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It’s called Enter Via Laundry because you embark on your dining odyssey via a side door, pass through a suburban laundry and into Helly Raichura’s dining room.
Helly creates intricate dishes that are deeply researched and considered interpretations of regional and historic Indian cuisine that shine with technique, soul, wit and authenticity.
Though she has done stints at Melbourne fine-diner Lûmé and Singapore’s Michelin-starred Gaggan, the kicker is that Helly is not only self-taught, but that Enter Via Laundry started as a moonlighting dream while she worked as an HR business adviser during the day.
‘Pasta not Pasta’, or ‘Khandvi’ as it’s known in Maharashtrian tradition. Picture: Holly Engelhardt
“Indian cuisine is extremely regional-specific,” she says. “There are few books and online resources are unreliable”.
So she calls, writes and interviews to construct her menus, bringing Melbourne dishes you’d never hear of unless you inherited them.
On MasterChef this year, Helly brought us her ‘Pasta not Pasta’, or ‘Khandvi’ as it’s known in Maharashtrian tradition. It looks and tastes like the finest pasta, with an aromatic broth of coconut, mustard seeds, asafoetida, sesame, green chilli and ginger lending depth, richness and fragrance. The ‘pasta not pasta’, made with chickpea flour, is so delicate it all but evaporates on the tongue – a sophisticated and ephemeral masterpiece. Just like her place hidden in plain sight, it’s a reminder never to assume a cuisine stops with what we know.
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