The best time to plan a food trip to Kolkata is during winter. The city is festive as it prepares to celebrate Christmas and New Year. Park Street is lit up, and New Market is filled with shops selling Christmas paraphernalia. The nip in the air whets your appetite not just for food but also for adventure. It is as if the city is on steroids. Or happy hormones.
Start your day with a morning walk in the green expanses of the Maidan. The Maidan is home to many sports club tents, including that of the 105-year-old East Bengal Football Club—one of the holy trinity of football clubs in this football-crazy city (the others are Mohun Bagan and Mohammedan Sporting). To put it politely, the team’s performance has been a bit whimsical of late, but what’s a sure winner is the chicken stew in its canteen! Chicken boiled with potatoes, unripe papaya, and carrots, seasoned with salt and pepper with a dash of milk and all-purpose flour. Sounds tame? Pair it with hot toast and butter, and you will have treated yourself to the breakfast of champions. While stew and toast are found across most sports tent canteens and office paras (central business districts), the secret weapon in the East Bengal canteen is the bhetki fish fry. Some say it has more fans than the stew, but why choose? Have both. You don’t have to be a member of the club to eat here. Walk-ins range from people on morning walks to lawyers from the high court during lunch hour. You can drive down (as I do) if you do not want to go on a morning walk!
I would urge you to walk after that. The weather is beautiful. The roads are wide. The green fields and the buildings that date to the time of the British transport one to another world. You don’t have to always walk in Champs Elysees or Hyde Park to take those vacation steps you know.
Head to the Aminia Restaurant in the New Market area for the legendary Kolkata biryani. They have an air-conditioned section, but I strongly recommend sitting in the bright, airy, non-airconditioned one that welcomes you. Order the mutton biryani. The regular mutton biryani comes with a piece of mutton and alu (potato). Do not expect a boiled egg in it. The standard Kolkata biryani is ‘eggless.’ You will find boiled eggs in the special biryani (and two pieces of mutton per plate). People think that the presence of a potato makes Kolkata’s biryani distinct. That’s not entirely true. Mumbai’s Irani restaurants add potatoes to biryani too. As do Bohra caterers. What makes the Kolkata biryani potato distinct is its slightly soft texture and the flavours that it soaks in from the biryani. Don’t miss the sight of the elderly cooks taking out servings of biryani from a handi on order. The steam that shrouds the small plate with which he scoops out rice, meat and potatoes beats any Instagram filter.
Go to the 150-year-old ‘New’ Market after this. Walk down its narrow passages, surrounded by Chinese-owned shoe shops, shops selling saris, lingerie, sweaters, junk jewellery, crockery, imported foods, Bandel cheese and electronics… to Nahoum, the iconic 122-year-old Jewish bakery. You might see a queue to get in, the length of which is inversely proportional to the number of days left for Christmas. Join the queue and buy a boozy Christmas pudding to take home. The rest of what’s on offer might be better suited for the gram, but you would never know without trying them.
Once done with shopping, window or otherwise, go to Badshah at Lindsay Street for the best mutton kathi rolls in the city and, therefore, the world. The mutton portion in their rolls has become a bit skimpy, so splurge and ask for a double mutton roll. Should you order an egg mutton roll? Well, would you add Coke to a single malt?
The sun sets early in winter, and you can walk down brightly lit, busy streets to Park Street, which decks up for Christmas. Step into Mocambo for dinner once you have walked up an appetite for it. Mocambo was founded in 1956, and if you look at the red leather sofa covers and hanging lamps, the menu which features heavily sauced ‘Continental’ fare served in glass baking dishes (and Moghlai dishes) and the waiters wearing white uniforms and turbans, you would not be blamed for thinking that you are in the 1950s and are bit underdressed for dinner. Order a hot toddy, prawn cocktail, chicken a le Kiev and fish a la Diana. Cut the chicken a la Kiev, watch the stream of butter flow out, life could hardly get more beautiful.
