To really understand something, you need to grasp it with your senses. To really understand a city and its people, you need to be out in the streets, exploring and eating with the locals. Kolkata is a melange of cultures, tastes, and ideologies, a melange that can be understood best in the city’s complex relationship with flavours. It wants simple and soulful food but it craves variety; it wants food that can satisfy the palate while replenishing the soul; it wants the act of eating to strive past the definition of gluttony into a cultivated, thoughtful, mindful experience where the eater is engaged with what is on the table, on the tongue. And in this city of fine dining restaurants and roadside shacks, there are endless ways of reaching food Nirvana. Welcome to the top things to do in Kolkata: Foodie edition.
Kolkata | India
It is no secret that on a holiday, a Bengali wakes up planning the day’s meals. They will stroll to the neighbourhood kochuri’r dokan for a cup of tea and settle down for a plate of kochuri-chholar dal, eat a few sondesh, and indulge in adda over the day’s newspaper. Bengalis don’t devour. Instead, they relish, they savour. Breakfast
Kolkata is a foodie’s fantasy. In the rumbling belly of this city, Bengali flavours collide with British cooking and Mughlai
Join us on a culinary tour of Calcutta and find the best things to do in Kolkata for foodies.
Top Things to Do in Kolkata for Foodies
- 1. Learn to buy fresh fish
- 2. Dig into a traditional Bengali meal
- 3. Indulge in Kolkata’s street food
- 4. Try Calcutta-Chinese
- 5. Drop in at a historic cabin
- 6. Gorge on continental fare on Park Street
- 7. Eat too many mishtis
- 8. Drink at the city’s oldest bars
- 9. Dine at a Pice Hotel
- 10. Breakfast in Chinatown’s Tiretta Bazaar
- 11. Stir up some delicacies at a Bengali cookery class
- 12. Indulge in baked goods at a Jewish Bakery
- 13. Start your day with some Kochuri
- 14. Try some Nawabi delicacies
- 15. Enjoy a Taste of Sikkim
- 16. Partake of Calcutta’s Cafe Culture
1. Learn to buy fresh fish
Whether or not you are courting a Bengali, learning to buy fresh fish is a skill that will go a long way. Every morning, the bazaars of this great city
2. Dig into a traditional Bengali meal
Bengali cuisine follows the rules of service à la russe. You get to savour each course and feel a fresh wave of anticipation inside your belly for the next. First come the bitters, then the leafy greens, followed by dal and fries, then the curries, fish, and meat, and finally dessert. There is, at least, one type of fish and either chicken or mutton. Well-known non-vegetarian delicacies include
TIP: Bengali food is seasonal. If you are wondering when to visit West Bengal and want to taste the famed hilsa fish, visit during the rains.
3. Indulge in Kolkata’s street food
In the early 1990s when my mother was alive, we would wait for the
4. Try Calcutta-Chinese
The curious case of Calcutta Chinese is never just a gastro-chemically successful mash-up of two largely different cuisines. It is, instead, a journey of cohabitation of diverse tastes and cultures that found global acclaim and local love. The Chinese immigrants who had made Calcutta their home at different points during the turbulent Raj grew to be an inextricable part of the city over the years and as the city warmed up to noodles and
Unlike their counterparts in Tangra– restaurants like Golden Joy, Beijing, and Big Boss— where the items on the menu have been perfected to suit the Indian palate, joints like Tung Nam and Pou Hing around Tiretta have succeeded in maintaining a balance between their Chinese and Indian identities. Here the dumplings come coated in gravy and sprinkled with chives and most of the dishes proudly flaunt the smell of fish sauce. And if you can’t have enough of the green chilli sauce that is dolloped liberally on everything, drop in at Pou Chong (they have a dim sum cafe in Kasba) to buy a bottle. They have been making and selling sauces to connoisseurs of Hakka Chinese since
5. Drop in at a historic cabin
Few things are as distinctive to Calcutta’s dining scene as the cabins. Called cabins because the seating area was divided by thin wooden walls and curtains into tiny personal cabins, these eateries flourished in the 20th century and are an important reminder of the city’s distinctive past to this day. They are mostly found in Shyambazar and surrounding north Kolkata neighbourhoods and serve an assortment of
6. Gorge on continental fare on Park Street
Fancy some Chicken a la Kyiv, Fish Florentine, or Baked Alaska? Head to Park Street, Kolkata’s prime dining and entertainment district since the colonial era. Peliti’s, the first dining establishment to introduce European confectionery products in this part of the world, and the elegant Skyroom were among the first restaurants to open on Park Street. They catered to Europeans who longed for a slice of home and to the English-educated Indian middle class with colonial tastes. Both these restaurants have since shut their doors, but Park Street is still home to Flurys, the city’s first tea room, and heritage eateries like Mocambo, Peter Cat, and Trincas that serve excellent Continental fare and a must-eat on any foodie’s guide to things to do in Kolkata. At Peter Cat, order the Chello Kebab, a dish which, since its inception in the kitchen here, has become intertwined with the city’s identity.
7. Eat too many mi shtis
No guide to things to do in Kolkata can be complete without mentioning mishti. Sweets. Wherever you go in Kolkata, there will be a
8. Drink at the city’s oldest bars
Calcutta’s old bars did not just capitalise on Calcutta’s love of snacking at every odd hour, they also offered the office-weary everydayers their evening respite: a cheap pint of beer or an old-fashioned glass of whiskey. Nowhere else in the world can you order a cheese-cherry-pineapple (yes, at Tripti, the age-old bar where you can see antique Belgian mirrors, it is a legitimate dish), a plate of tangy
9. Dine at a Pice Hotel
One of the best things to do in Kolkata if you love to eat is eating at a pice hotel. If you don’t care about ambience and are eager to try homecooked Bengali food, give the Bhojohari Mannas and the Oh! Calcuttas a miss and make your way into a pice hotel where patrons not only share tables but also stories. Once upon a time, you could buy a filling lunch for less than a pice (1/4 of an anna) at eating houses like Siddheswari Ashram (where we had a traditional Bengali meal), Tarun Niketan, and Adarsh Hindu Hotel. The menu is a la carta and you’ve to pay for everything, including the slice of lemon, an extra ladle of rice, and even the banana leaf you are served on. There is no fixed menu and the day’s menu is usually scribbled on a chalkboard. These eateries specialize in home-cooked Bengali meals– cooked in both
10. Breakfast in Chinatown’s Tiretta Bazaar
This one’s for early risers because by 7 am, the steaming dumplings, the delicious pork buns, and the peppery fish ball soup are all gone. Home to Calcutta’s Chinese population, Tiretta Bazaar transforms into a bustling breakfast spot at 6 am every day. Hawkers with cauldrons full of soup, stacked steamers containing momos, and bamboo baskets packed with giant
11. Stir up some delicacies at a Bengali cookery class
If you have been enamoured by poppy seeds and mustard and can’t wait to stir up some
12. Indulge in baked goods at a Jewish Bakery
Located in the dinghy confines of Hogg Market, Kolkata’s last surviving Jewish bakery serves a variety of toothsome goodies. Undeterred by globalization, Nahoum’s continues to retain its classic Jewish charm– the original menu has only been slightly altered to fit changing tastes– and old-world demeanour. Loyal customers swear by their rich fruit cake, lemon tarts, water biscuits, Black Forest cake, and cream puffs.
13. Start your day with some Kochuri
There’s nothing like some kochuri for breakfast and breakfasts in Kolkata are memorable! Either paired with some spicy aloo’r tarkari or some narkel dewa chholar dal, kochuris make for the best breakfast in town. Unlike the North Indian kachouri, a kochuri in Kolkata is a stuffed flatbread that is fried in oil or ghee. The stuffing is either a spicy mix of dal or greens peas. Some places make fish kochuris too! Finish with some jalebis or sandesh.
14. Try some Nawabi delicacies
Of course, you must have some Kolkata biriyani at India Restaurant or at Royal, the one that comes with half a boiled potato along with the customary chunk of meat and a hard-boiled egg but what about the is-like-silk-on-the-tongue Haleem at
TIP: Visiting during Ramzan? You can taste some of the best dishes on a food walk at the Zakaria Street Ramadan Market. This food walk is undoubtedly one of the best food experiences you can have in Kolkata.
15. Enjoy a Taste of Sikkim
There’s no doubt that momos have taken the country by storm and Kolkata is no exception. So when Doma Wang entered the food scene with bowls of piping hot
16. Partake of Calcutta’s Cafe Culture
If you have been watching Calcutta’s food scene, you may have noted how the idea of a cup of coffee has escaped College Street’s Coffee House and moved to cute cafes with Instagrammable decors. At Artsy, hidden in the bylanes of Minto Park, you can sip your coffee while flipping through books and artwork while at Lighthouse Cafe in Jodhpur Park, you can chance upon some world-class literature and workshops on photography. 8th Day Cafe & Bakery, run by an American expat couple, bakes some of the best bagels in town while at the popular Sienna Cafe, you can nibble on healthy avocado toasts and salads topped with topli nu paneer. Hope Cafe in Gariahat employs staff from the marginalised and differently-abled community and serves excellent sandwiches with coffee. And since this is Calcutta where we can scarce go without our tea, there are places like Whistling Kettle and Cha Bar which specialize in high-quality teas.
Here’s a tip: One trip to Kolkata isn’t enough to savour all that it has to offer, so don’t try it. It is a city of foodies, for foodies and there are countless things to do in Kolkata. Take it slow…like the locals. Spend time de-boning the shorshe pabda on your dish. Listen to the rhythm of your fingers as your mash kochur-loti in your steaming rice. Let the dimsums open up their juicy hearts to you. Enjoy as your teeth break into the shell of your fowl cutlet; let the
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Do you travel to eat? What are your favourite things to do in Kolkata?
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