Glen Waverley has never been short of Indian food, but most of it lives at the takeaway-and-a-naan end of the strip. Gunpowder Social is a different proposition: a dining room, a bar and an open-air terrace on Level 3 of Kingsway Central, at 73–75 Kingsway, pitching modern regional Indian cooking at a sit-down, book-a-table price. A reader tipped us off; here is what we know before we go and eat there properly.
The short version
- What: an Indian diner, bar and terrace calling itself “regional India from Kashmir to Kanyakumari”, with a signature chicken dish built on gunpowder masala.
- Where: Level 3, Kingsway Central, 73–75 Kingsway, Glen Waverley 3150. That is the Kingsway restaurant strip, a short walk from Glen Waverley station.
- Cost: mains $27–42 (most meat mains $33–41), breads $6–11, desserts $12–19. A shared dinner lands around $60–80 a head before drinks, closer to $90 if you order generously.
- When: dinner Monday and Wednesday to Sunday; lunch Thursday to Sunday; closed Tuesdays. Happy hour 5pm to 6pm on open days.
- Book: OpenTable, or walk in and take a seat at the bar.
Who is cooking
The kitchen is run by Chef Hassan, who the restaurant introduces as a native of Lucknow, the city the venue calls India’s foodie capital and the home of Mughlai cooking, with more than twenty years’ experience. His resume, as the venue tells it, runs through restaurants in the UK, New Zealand and Vietnam before Melbourne. The operator is the SilverSpoon Restaurant Group, which the website describes as Hong Kong based.
Lucknow matters here. It is the home of Awadhi cooking, the slow, aromatic, cream-and-nut end of northern Indian food, and it shows in the menu: a Mumtaz lamb in cashew-almond gravy, a “Nawabi” curry named for the city’s old rulers, and dum biryanis layered and sealed the old way. The restaurant’s own line is that it cooks with “regional grammars, not heat for its own sake”, which is a useful way to read the menu. That is the promise, at least: heat where a region calls for it, not everywhere.
The menu, with prices
Twelve sections and 66 dishes at last count. The names are playful (Chick Picks, Ba-Ba Black Sheep, Beef It Up, Ocean’s Bounty); the descriptions underneath are regional and specific.
Start here. The signature is the Gunpowder Girl ($28), chicken in a spicy podi gunpowder masala, the southern spice-and-lentil powder that presumably gives the restaurant its name. Around it sit tandoor-baked salmon cubes in a yoghurt-spice marinade ($35), a rum-marinated, flame-grilled lamb chop the menu calls Drunken Lambo ($34), citrus-basted octopus ($31) and whole roasted quail ($36). Vegetarians get the best-named dish on the menu, the Chaat Italiano ($26): burrata dressed in a spicy chaat.
The chicken section is where the venue’s featured review points. Truffle Butter ($40) is the dish that review singles out, a butter chicken pushed up a class with truffle. The classic Delhi-style Butter Chicken is $34, a coconut-and-curry-leaf Chettinad is $34, and there is a char-smoked Tikka Masala ($33) and a slow-cooked Kadai ($33).
Lamb runs $30–40: the cashew-almond Mumtaz and the creamy Nawabi at the top ($40 each), a Kashmiri-chilli Rogan Josh and a coconut-based Madras ($36), and Saag Ghosh ($30). Beef runs $39–41 and two of the three dishes are fillet, including a Goan vindaloo the menu bills as Va-Va-Voooom Vindaloo. The seafood mains section is two dishes, a scallop and prawn Malabari curry ($41) and a Tamil-style prawn thokku ($39). Duck ($42) and a gluten-free village-style goat ($35) round out the meats.
Vegetarian mains are a proper section, not an afterthought: black-lentil Dal Bukhara finished with buttercream ($31), everyday Daal Tadka ($27), Kadhai Paneer ($32), Saag Paneer ($31) and paneer kofta ($32). Biryanis are $34 (vegetable), $39 (chicken) and $41 (mutton). Breads $6–11, with a truffle cheese naan ($11) the menu itself flags as a must. Sides include a mango chilli chutney and Tamil-style heritage pickles at $8 each.
Dessert is short and sweet: rasmalai ($16), pistachio kulfi ($14), hot gulab jamun ($19), and a Gunpowder Tiramisu ($19) that says a lot about the kitchen’s attitude.
None of that is curry-house pricing. Read it as a night-out restaurant that happens to be Indian and it makes sense.
The room and the terrace
Two spaces. The dining room is done in emerald green and terracotta with a Holi-colour portrait on the wall. The Skybar terrace is open air above the strip, holds up to 60, and runs cocktails and small plates; on paper, the terrace is the reason to come on a warm night. Happy hour is 5pm to 6pm daily on open days.
For groups, the venue lists six bookable spaces, from the seven-to-eight-seat Spice House up to the 62-guest main dining room, with the terrace at 60, which puts it in contention for the work dinner, the birthday and the wedding-eve family meal that this suburb runs on.
Hours, booking and getting there
Dinner Monday and Wednesday from 5pm to 10pm; Thursday and Sunday lunch 12pm to 2:15pm and dinner 5pm to 10pm; Friday and Saturday lunch 12pm to 2:15pm and dinner 5pm to 11pm. Closed Tuesdays. Check the website before a public holiday; hours on third-party listings do not all agree with the venue’s own.
Bookings are through OpenTable; walk-ins are welcome at the bar. Phone +61 413 503 399, email [email protected]. Kingsway Central sits on the strip about 70 metres from Glen Waverley station and a few minutes on foot from The Glen, with on-street and rear-of-strip parking.
What people are saying
The venue publishes its own Google rating on its site: 4.85 from 589 reviews as at September 2026, with the truffle butter chicken the one dish its featured reviews name. That is a strong number and a lot of reviews, so take it as a sign the suburb has noticed. We will run our own review once we have eaten our way through the menu; this piece is what the restaurant says about itself, checked against its published menu and listings, not a verdict on the food.
Should you go?
If you want a curry-house feed, Kingsway still has plenty. If you want a Melbourne night-out restaurant that cooks regional Indian food seriously, with a terrace, a bar and rooms for a crowd, Gunpowder Social is making that pitch, and it is worth a booking to test it.
Gunpowder Social, Level 3, Kingsway Central, 73–75 Kingsway, Glen Waverley VIC 3150. gunpowdersocial.com.au. Story tip from a reader; MELBZ does not pay for tips and had no contact with the venue for this piece.
