It's hard enough for most restaurants to create and present a single menu that makes sense to the diner, let alone two.
But chef and restaurateur Sukhjinder Singh of Indian-Hungarian restaurant Diamond Cuisine in Clifton Hill in northeast Melbourne isn't here to go with the flow, so why not?
Two menus - one Indian and the other Hungarian – don't immediately strike the average diner as necessarily harmonious. But locals have been quick to see (and taste) what has made sense to Singh for quite some time.
Singh grew up in the Punjab region of India. Like most Indian kids, he started life surrounded by fantastic family cooks.
"My mother and my sister are really good cooks and I loved their food,” Singh says.
"There is something for everyone, and that’s what people love about coming here."
But it wasn't until he went to Europe at the age of 19 that he first considered cooking professionally. Singh started off in the UK where his first job was in a kitchen.
"As I worked, I started thinking that maybe I could actually do this as a career. I [came home and] got married, and soon after, we went to Hungary," he says.
He studied hospitality in Hungary before coming to Australia where he found himself working with Hungarians again.
After a number of years working in both Indian and Hungarian restaurants, Singh took on Diamond Cuisine, offering the best of both of his cooking worlds under the one roof.
"I love that Indian and Hungarian food is totally different. You can't even use the kind of salt in Indian cooking that you can for Hungarian," he laughs.
But he says he doesn't think it matters. "In every kitchen, you see people cooking cuisines not from their culture, and if the food is good, nobody cares who's cooking it."
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Ready, set, goulash!
Singh says customers are welcome to try food from both menus.
“We have some customers who come in and the wife wants to eat Indian and the husband wants Hungarian, and they love it. Many others love to order a little from each menu. Butter chicken and beef goulash work well on one table, and both are dishes you need to share.
On the Indian side, there are jewels from the Himalayas to Kerala, though you get the feeling that the dishes from Singh's home region, like the curry of smoked goat in classic Punjabi spices ($16.90), are a little more personal.
The Hungarian menu is a homage to a crucial point in Singh's cooking journey: “It is in Hungarian restaurants where I deeply learned how to cook. Here, it's pure European comfort. Hearty beef goulash [$22], the ubiquitous Australian favourite Stroganoff [$23], and an array of schnitzels [$20-24] that tip the cap to other places on the world map.
Singh says he's delighted about some of the feedback he's received. “We have many Hungarian customers, and people who have travelled to Hungary over the years come here and eat our food and say that it is some of the best they’ve eaten. This makes me happy."
The more you think about it, the more natural this diversity seems.
"When you start accepting different ideas, it makes you broad minded. I teach my son that he is not Indian, he is a human being. The world is changing, and we embrace this," Singh says.
Clifton Hill
VIC 3068
(03) 9481 2345
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