Gertrude Street is perhaps one of Fitzroy’s ultimate high-end dining experiences. Along this road, you will find some of the most dedicated, passionate, incredibly talented chefs in Melbourne. You will travel through cultures and histories you may never have been to. Taste spices, experience aromas and find yourself wandering about like a traveller along a bazaar of many.
ISH also calls Gertrude Street home. Its shopfront is simple, welcoming, with those three letters above the large windows and the sign sitting out of the brick in gold. It looks like a place out of time.
Perhaps something you would see in the busy streets of Paris in a time so long ago. Or a place you’d see open into the night in the Lower East Side of New York City, filled with its secrets that only those lucky enough to be seated will ever get to know.
A new venue to the neighbourhood, ISH has very quickly established its reputation as an inventive and inspired Indian restaurant. Ganeev Bains is the captain of this vessel. ISH is an amalgamation. It is native, authentic, and individually experienced, a taste of the past, a heart and soul of a person, and yet it takes those philosophies and frames them within a modern, new, open, worldly stage. A reimagining of something old and an invention of something new.
There is a sense of wonder here. A feeling you get when stepping into a place that says to you, ‘Trust us, we are here to explore and to imagine and to create, you are here to experience.’
Its Butter Chicken is delicious. Kerala home-style beef fry has a melted texture that will fire your senses. Eggplant Moilee Curry is a must, the naan…..simply perfect. Naan is just one of those things we love. We advise the Panna Cotta for dessert, thank us later.
Stepping inside you are greeted not just by the staff but the decor they call home. Open brick is one of our favourite things. It is both warm and inviting. Rustic yet modern. Open wooden beams only add to the setting. A wild bar and generous yet intimate seating. The aromas of India seem to be part of the architecture of this place. As though they have been fused within every brick and timber.
When you leave ISH, you step through a portal and breath in the fresh crisp air and walk off, a traveller, a wanderer, back from a journey.
We recommend, and we adore, ISH.
Bon Appetite.
Address
199 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy VIC 3065
Website
Contact
+61 420 214 855
Opening Hours
Tuesday – Saturday: 6 – 10:30 pm
Sunday, Monday: Closed
