I like visiting Calcutta. I enjoy the hustle and bustle of the streets, the crowds, the talkative taxi drivers – and the food. Every time I go there, I find that a new restaurant has opened up somewhere. The city’s foodie loves a good meal, and there is a wide variety of cuisine on offer (though, it must be said, nothing like the variety you get in Delhi). Some of the restaurants, alas, are nothing to write home about. Some, however, stay with you.
One such restaurant – as I discovered during my last trip to the city a couple of weeks ago – is 1658, recently opened in the heart of Calcutta by UK-born Shaun Kenworthy, a most creative chef who came to India in 2000 and has now settled in Calcutta. He opened a restaurant in the city called The Blue Potato in 2006, and I had some wonderful meals there. The restaurant shut, mainly because it couldn’t get a liquor licence.
His new restaurant, in Calcutta's Chowringhee area, has no such problems. There is a nice bar menu, and some of the youngsters there seem to spend all their time standing by the bar, swinging to the music that a DJ plays for them. We – a group of five — did what (some) non-youngsters like to do – sit in a cosy corner and eat.
The menu, as I had expected, was interesting, and included dishes from all kinds of cuisines – from Italian and Thai to Continental and Mediterranean. The prices of the main dishes are mostly between Rs. 400 and Rs. 600.
We asked for a plate of “skinny pizzas” – topped with caramelised onion jam and goat cheese. For the mains, two people asked for bangers and mash, one for spaghetti with meat balls, another for a grilled chicken breast and I wanted pork chops. Of course, I had to ask for the one dish that wasn’t there, but I am one of those easy to please chaps and promptly settled for pork fillet.
First, the pizza. It was thin and crispy and the toppings were delicious. Now for the bangers and mash. The large sausages were juicy, and the mash was soft like butter. The spaghetti, as the menu card said, was spicy, with the tomato giving a tart bite to it. My pork was excellent, too – tender, juicy and smeared in thick brown gravy, and with boiled vegetables and French fries on the side.
The one who asked for the chicken breast was very happy with her dish – and generously offered it around. Then the sweet-faced waiter confessed that he had given her pork. She loves pork, so she didn’t mind – and one of the banger-and-mashers, another pork loving individual who had shuddered visibly when she had offered to share what she thought was chicken, pounced on it with an agility that would have surprised Nureyev. “That’s the best chicken I’ve ever had,” he announced, chomping happily.
We were too full for dessert, but the heart aches even when the stomach grumbles. Shaun offered us a nice dessert platter, which we shared. I am a bit hazy about all the delectable sweets that we indulged in, but remember that there was a sunken pudding, a chocolate mousse and some memorable toffee-jaggery sauce over a piece of cake.
Overall, the evening, too, was a memorable one. If you’d pardon the terrible pun, I thoroughly enjoyed – as the Bengali would say — the Shaun shine.
Rahul Verma is a seasoned street food connoisseur
