Little bit Indian, little bit dude, whole lotta Enmore at Irene's on Enmore Road

Sometimes a restaurant is an open book, heart on sleeve, revealing itself to you as soon as you walk in the door. And sometimes it looks and feels like a hundred others. The former is intriguing, and the latter a little depressing.

If you're going to go to all the trouble and expense of opening a restaurant, then it might pay to let us know who you are and what you are all about.

In that sense, Irene's is instantly intriguing; the name adopted from a favourite aunty, the young chef Mumbai-born, the menu carrying goat curry with lime pickle and rice pancakes. Immediately, you have my interest.

The space itself has history, being the former home of Naomi Hart and Gregory Llewellyn's Hartsyard, which Dorothy Lee and Jarrod Walsh took over in 2018.

They're now off to open a new restaurant inside the Old Clare Hotel in Chippendale, and have teamed up with chef and friend Neville Dsouza, who will run the Enmore space as a pop-up for the next six months.

Dsouza's CV includes time at Gowings, Yellow and Cirrus restaurants, yet his food is based on the family feasts his aunt Irene would prepare every second Sunday in Mumbai.

The interior hasn't changed a great deal since Hartsyard's fried chicken era, although the plain white wall panels and the hanging sound baffles are now brilliantly coloured in shades of orange, yellow, pink and green.

It's no more comfortable, either. That bare-board bench seating has been numbing bums since 2014.  A dish of fresh, warm sardine fillets ($15) in an excessively salty dressing of tamari, shallots and olive oil isn't adding to the comfort factor, either.

But then freshly baked pull-apart pav (dinner rolls) arrive, all crusty little tops and soft and fluffy insides ($6 each) with whippy butter.

And a killer dish of zucchini flowers a la Bombay ($7 each) with a crunchtastic coat of armour, stuffed with soft potato, spiced with black mustard seeds and curry leaves, on a squish of green mint and coriander mayo.

Looking back, I should have put the zucchini flower croquette into the dinner roll to make a modern vada pav, one of the stars of Mumbai street food.

But I didn't, because I wanted to save the bread for the curry. Wrong again, the curry comes with neatly folded panpole rice pancakes that are like edible lace doilies.

True to the original recipe, the goat (sourced from Whole Beast Butchery) is slow-cooked on the bone, the sauce thick, warmly spiced and dusted with poha, broken up flattened and dehydrated rice.

It's good with a shaved wombok salad ($20) chockers with baby zucchini, mint and almonds in a spiced-up caper dressing.

There are flaws in this modest and likeable restaurant, but they seem to come more from a lack of resources and staff than anything chronic. A few scales left on sardines, a mango lassi cocktail (nice idea) flecked with ice; that sort of thing.

What rings true is the almost domestic sense of spareness and simplicity. Nothing is tricked-up or turned into Instagram bait, which is quite relaxing.

Wines are poured into stemmed and polished glasses, the music is in a '90s downtempo groove, and staff are high on personality.  

Dsouza's childhood treat of jelly meets falooda, the cool and refreshing sundae that India inherited from Persia, in the "fruit salad" ($18).

The tall parfait glass holds layers of banana, apple, nutmeg custard, grapes and jelly, with a sprinkling of multi-coloured candied fennel seeds dissolving on top.

"It's everybody's childhood in a cup," says Dsouza, and it is, whether you're falooda-raised, trifle-loving or a jello kid.

How nice that a tribute to a Mumbai aunty can speak across borders and generations, and that a chef tracing his own identity can come up with nostalgic-but-modern dishes that sit happily in multi-culti Enmore.

For all those who don't have an aunty Irene of their own, feel free to borrow this one.

The low-down

Irene's Enmore

Vibe Little bit Indian, little bit dude, whole lotta Enmore

Go-to dish Zucchini flower a la Bombay, $7 each

Drinks Kingfisher lager, seven cocktails and a minimalist 8-bottle wine list