It was the best of times for the elite in post-independence Calcutta. Dressed in their weekend best, the city’s brown sahibs and boxwallahs would drive down Chowringhee, soaking in the Mai dan breeze, and trundle in their cars towards Park Street for a night of revelry with the best food and drinks the city could offer.
Some would head to Mocambo and hit the spacious dance floor. Some would walk into Trincas for sliced chicken in chilli lemon sauce or steamed lemongrass fish, as they tapped their feet to live jazz music. Yet others headed next door to Blue Fox for classy continental cuisine or Waldorf for lip-smacking Chinese. At Amber, less than a kilometre from Park Street, one could savour Kabuli naan with delectable reshmi kebab. Firpo’s on Chowringhee Road attracted the rich and the famous who watched cabaret at the restaurant’s grand, pillar-lined ballrooms and enjoyed a five-course meal.
Since then fine dining has evolved with time. But much remains the same at some of the old restaurants on Park Street and central Kolkata, though scores of new ones have sprung up across the city, especially on Purna Das Road, Lansdowne and Southern Avenue, offering fusion, continental, Bengali, Lebanese, Japanese and Thai food for the changing taste bud. While ‘Calcutta biryani’ has always been popular, you now have many more outlets selling it apart from Awadhi cuisine, including the delectable galawti kebab and raan biryani.
Mocambo, the old lady of Park Street, still serves fish Florentine, chicken Tettrazini and beckty bell meuniere while its sister restaurant across the street — Peter Cat — continues to sizzle with Cello Kebab. “We have jealously guarded the taste of our dishes over decades. For us, fine dining hasn’t changed in terms of the food,” said Nitin Kothari, owner of the restaurants. But now you have new kids on the block, like Chapter 2, that have beckti Florentene, chicken steak mushroom sauce and ham steak that stick to their authentic tastes. “These are classic continental and Anglo-Indian dishes that we try to keep as original as possible. This is our tribute to Sky Room that no longer exists,” said co-founder and owner of Chapter 2 Shiladitya Chaudhury.
One Step Up on Park Street serves shepherd’s pie, khao suey and fish Florentine with original flavours and taste.
Some others, like Trincas, however, have modernized their food and décor with elements from the past. Trincas has recreated the velvet red backdrop to the performing stage that had been taken off three decades ago. Bands play more contemporary tunes. It’s also reviving the old taste of Chinese food and bringing back some traditional continental dishes with a dash of freshness. So, the chicken a la Kiev is now a mini chicken a la Kiev with multiple small pieces. The chicken chipolata has been reinvented and the famous grilled pork chop is now a sizzler. “The taste of chilli chicken has changed over the years. We are bringing back the ’80s flavour when chilli chicken had less batter and more flesh. Caramel custard, too, has remained a bestseller at Trincas despite the popularity of chocolate mousse,” said partner Anand Puri. Trincas, he added, was a late entrant into Chinese food with Ming Room in the Eighties.
Fine dining is no longer restricted to Park Street or CBD but traverses the length and breadth of Kolkata and beyond — to New Town and Salt Lake. “With Oudh 1590 and Chapter 2, my brother and I aimed to launch a new form of fine dining, which we call ‘neighbourhood fine dining’. We selected non-traditional commercial areas as— middle-class localities—creating new dining destinations,” said Chaudhury. With eateries mushrooming across the city, the eating pattern had turned flexible, said Sudesh Poddar, owner of Songhai and Manthan in central Kolkata.
Fine dining is no longer just continental or Chinese. Bengali cuisine is now a big draw with Aheli at Peerless Inn introducing it three decades ago and others, like Oh!Calcutta, Bhojohori Manna and 6 Ballygunge Place, rustling up mouth-watering delicacies that would once be cooked at Bengali homes. “We have been researching and developing our menu but the core offering has always been authentic Bengali. It is now a part of mainstream fine dining,” said Kuldeep Bhartee, CEO of Peerless Hotels.
Much of Kolkata’s fine dining remains the same at the old haunts but it has also evolved with new restaurants coming up across the city, offering fusion, continental, Bengali, Awadhi, Lebanese, Japanese and Thai food among others
It is also about the experience that a restaurant offers, according to Siddharth Kothari, owner of Peter Hu? that opened on Free School Street last year. “A lot more people now eat out and do it more often than 20 years ago. Youngsters are ready to experiment with food and are looking beyond Chinese. We offer Asian dishes, including Japanese, like sushi, and classic European ones. Till recently, they were not part of the Kolkata menu. Tastes are evolving along with an accent on ambience,” said Kothari.
