Horn Please is turning 15, and you’re invited to its weekend-long celebration this August. Come for lunch or dinner and catch live belly dancing, a dhol (traditional drumming) set and more.

Those familiar with Kyneton’s Indian restaurant Dhaba at the Mill and the Dhaba Food Truck rejoiced when owners Jessi and Jennifer Singh announced that they would be opening a second restaurant in Fitzroy North.

Melbourne has one of the most culturally diverse culinary scenes in the world, but you already know that and so do we. What you may not know though, is where to find the cream of the crop when it comes to Indian food—enter Urban List. 

Melbourne's best Indian restaurants come in so many forms. You've got local neighbourhood eateries with BYO licenses and incredibly friendly staff who treat their regulars like family. Then there are the more contemporary Indian restaurants in Melbourne's CBD and inner suburbs that aim to reinvent the cuisine, experimenting with classic recipes to create altogether new and exciting dishes.

Former Horn Please owner Jessi Singh has returned to Australia – and to the restaurant – after three and a half years in America, and he's learned a trick or two. In a hat tip to the famed Chinese American dish General Tso’s chicken, Horn Please’s Colonel Tso’s cauliflower sees deep fried florets doused in a tomato chilli sauce and sprinkled with sesame seeds. It was a bestseller at Singh’s NYC restaurant BabuJi, but the acidic sauce in the version we try is a little overpowering, which is more than enough excuse to make return trips for self-serve beers.

Owner Jessi Singh has moved back to Melbourne for the project.

After a successful stint in the USA, chef and restaurateur Jessi Singh will be returning to Melbourne. The Indian-born foodie is en route back to Fitzroy North, ready to relaunch his former restaurant Horn Please, which will open doors mid-July.

Horn Please has passed through a few different owners' and chefs' hands throughout the years. It was originally run by Jessi Singh until he sold it in 2015, to work over in New York. Amar and Raj Singh then took over until Jessi returned in 2018 to work as a consultant and chef for Horn Please. 

Nowadays, each of these chefs and restaurateurs plays apart in making Horn Please one of the very best Indian restaurants in Melbourne. 

Named after the popular hand painted slogans that decorate the back of vehicles across India, Horn Please showcases local ingredients cooked with care.

The reconfiguration of the old Gurkhas Nepalese space features a bar at the front and dining tables and chairs towards the back. The walls are adorned with kitsch Indian studio portraits that Jennifer collected during her numerous trips to India. Local artist Rebeccah Power has painted her own versions of the portraits, and hand painted Hindi proverbs straight onto the wall that leads into the kitchen.

South Indian, North Indian, Malaysian-Indian, Indo-Chinese, Indian fusion – Melbourne has it all. Australians’ perennial favourite butter chicken can, of course, be found at a lot of these restaurants but we encourage you to expand your palate. There's a whole world of ingenious, time-honoured dishes hailing from every regional pocket of the subcontinent.

After a successful stint in the USA, chef and restaurateur Jessi Singh will be returning to Melbourne. The Indian-born foodie is en route back to Fitzroy North, ready to relaunch his former restaurant Horn Please, which will open doors mid-July. This will be the first of many ventures for Singh, who is already looking at the Sydney market for opportunities.

Fitzroy North is quieter, more village-y and more affluent than Fitzroy proper , but the suburbs are almost equally matched when it comes to eating and drinking. Head here for affordable (and famous) Moroccan soups, Indian and Sri Lankan buffets, classic pub meals and elaborate, technique-driven dining from a veteran chef. There’s something for everyone.