Taj Indian Sweets & Restaurant

The sweet counter stops most people where they stand. Trays of mithai in rows, made by hand, more varieties than you can hold in your head at once, and every one of them different from the one beside it.

They're rich, which is the point, and they stop short of heavy. Cardamom used with restraint, textures that are properly distinct from each other, and a sweetness that doesn't flatten everything else.

The kaju katli is the one people take home by the box. The laddoos and the rasmalai have their own supporters and the argument about which is best is a real argument in this room.

Get the masala tea even if you came for something else. It turns up properly spiced and properly hot, and it's the thing that turns a quick stop into sitting down.

The food beside the sweets is vegetarian and doesn't treat that as a limitation. Street food, thalis, paneer done several ways, biryani with enough going on that each mouthful is a bit different from the last.

Indian music plays and it's pitched right — there, never loud, never the thing you're talking over. It stays relaxed even when it's completely full, which on a weekend it will be.

People drive a very long way for this. Some come from two hours out and have been doing it for a decade, which tells you more than any single dish could.

Around Diwali the whole place changes gear and the counter becomes the main event. It fills and stays full and the trays empty faster than they can be refilled.

Harris Park is a small, dense pocket of Sydney and the food is why the suburb has a reputation at all. Wigram Street on an evening is one of the better streets in the city to be hungry on.