Our restaurant critics’ picks of the latest and best eats around the country right now: Bang Street Food, Sydney.
Can you name a famous Bangladeshi restaurant? You can now. Or at least you will soon, once you get a taste of Bang. With a look as bold as its name – courtesy of co-owner and designer Nicholas Gurney – and popping with colour (and that’s just the tiger-design tees on the staff), it seems like one of those places that could’ve got by on insert-cuisine-here cooking. But thanks to chef Tapos Singha (an alumnus of Est and Gowings), Bang presents food that appeals as much for the precision on show as it does for the exoticism of the dishes. Puffed rice served in a cone of paper printed with news of Bangladesh’s independence (in Bengali, naturally) sizzles with lime and spice, while brightness and freshness is the order of the day in the salad of young coconut, green mango, pawpaw and snake beans, all cut into batons and sprinkled with toasty almonds and mint. The curry sauce bathing juicy mussels (picked out with curry leaves, red chilli and sawtooth coriander) is so fine that it demands at least a second round of unusually impressive and flaky naan. Bang isn’t cheap, but there’s plenty here for your buck. Prepare to be impressed.
Bang Street Food, 3/410 Crown St, Surry Hills, NSW, (02) 8354 1096.
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