“Good manners spoil good food. Go ahead, eat with your hands,” Iti Misra insists as she takes the fried Hilsa off of my plate to get its bones out for me. Next, she directs me to separate a portion from the mound of rice and have it with the caramelized onions that have accompanied the Bhaja Ilsa (fried Hilsa fish). “The onions soak in the oil from the fish go extremely well with the steamed rice,” she explains. A little wary but mostly excited, I do as I am told. For a Non-Bengali like me, this is high up on my experience of culinary adventures and I’m quite relieved to have the 77-year-old home chef guide me through the sumptuous but alien feast that is spread out in front of me. For a moment, I forget I am dining at the iconic Bombay Canteen despite it being a Mumbai restaurant that has become synonymous with authentic regional food that keeps surprising.
The food this time, though unlike anything I have had before, tastes like an Indian home-cooked meal somewhere and I find out that that is exactly what the restaurant’s philosophy is with this regional Bengali pop-up. The Bombay Canteen has unpacked flavours from a Bengali home, course by course, to give its diners the exclusive ‘Canteen Bengali Bhoj’.
Having collaborated with Iti Misra, a home-chef from Kolkata; Chef Thomas Zacharias and Chef Shannon worked together to put together a menu featuring lesser-known Bengali delicacies for diners to delve into the cuisine deeper than what is usually commercially available. They have curated a special Bengali Bhoj (set meal) available only for dinner with not just non-vegetarian but vegetarian variants too.
“It’s a frequent misconception that we eat only non-veg food. We have a huge array of vegetarian dishes as well,” Iti clarifies, explaining how their vegetarianism is part of a larger social construct of widows and elder women not being allowed to eat meat. Though times have changed now, a good variety of vegetarian dishes make it into the typical Bengali household’s dining as they do to the Bengali Bhoj canteen. There is the Posto Borah (Pan fried poppy seed cutlets), the Bada Eychorer Kofta (Raw jackfruit koftas in a spicy curry) and the Shona Mooger Dal (Roasted moong dal with green peas) which I get the opportunity to try. With a hint of mango ginger balanced by the adequate amount of salt, it seems like the ultimate comfort food, a taste reminiscent of my own childhood. For meat-eaters too, the options are more than plentiful. There is the Thor Diya Chingri Jhol – prawns in a coconut milk curry with banana stems and gondhoraj limes, perfectly succulent and bathed with flavour. The Bhaja Ilish - which any Bengali worth their salt would willingly write odes to for a piece or three during Hilsa season. Iti’s favourite, she says that it is the excitement and the anticipation of the fish that makes it all the more delicious. It’s a seasonal love that fits in well with Bombay Canteen’s never-ending mission to gently nudge (or at least, entice) diners to celebrate local, seasonal flavours and eat more sustainably. Not to mention anybody following Chef Thomas on Instagram knows how pointed his weaponry is when it comes to his war against the sheer futility of local restaurants serving Basa Fish.
The Hilsa, like most ingredients that have gone into the making of the Bengali Bhoj, have been sourced straight from West Bengal, showcasing Bengali cuisine in the most authentic manner. And authentic Bengali food cannot happen without the use of mustard, which is exactly what I relish in the Goalando Steamer Chicken Curry that I am served next. The chicken is soft and piquant while the thin curry with a strong essence of mustard gives the dish a sharp, distinctive taste. “The experience of eating the Goalando Steamer Chicken Curry is enhanced if you know the story behind it,” Iti says as I hold a spoon full in mid-air. Apparently, it was the staple diet of travellers making the long journey from East Bengal (now Bangladesh) to West Bengal by crossing the river in a ferry. “The 10-hour-long journey would famish people thus the boatmen came up with a quick, easy-to-make recipe. They put in chicken, mustard, garlic and other spices in a pot of boiling water to make this curry. “It is delicious...tastes of anticipation,” Iti describes, painting me a picture as I indulge in the iconic country chicken curry created by the boatmen of undivided Bengal.
They say that to understand a culture, you have to taste it first and the Bombay Canteen achieves this with the Bengali Bhoj as I learn about the history of the place and of the cuisine. “People in the East usually ate spicier food, whereas people in the western part ate bland food. The Canteen’s Bengali Bhoj is a taste of unified Bengal. A taste of what you would have if you went to have an authentic meal at any Bengali household. There are no fancy decorations or garnishes. I have not corrupted the taste to match the local palette. This is as homely and authentic as it gets,” Iti explains. However, like most cuisines, Bengali cuisine too has a fair share of cultural influences. The chops and the cutlets are all derived from the British whereas their fish biryanis and the hot spices in their delicacies are inspired by the Mughals. A finer example is the Suleiman’s Mutton Rezala, a spicy dish cooked in a light yoghurt gravy.
What makes the experience of the Canteen’s Bhoj all the more traditional is the strict flavour path that their Thali follows, something that Bengali cuisine demands. All meals start off with something bitter. “This is to cleanse the palette, plus everything tastes good after eating something bitter,” Iti chuckles. This is followed by something salty (bland vegetables), then something sharp –preferably something with mustard or onion in it, then something hot like chicken curry, followed by something sour, usually seasonal veggies and ultimately something sweet. Following the same rule, Iti and the other chefs cooked almost 45-50 dishes, then shortlisted 20 that were the most unique and easy to cook in a commercial kitchen. These made it to the thali of the Bombay Canteen’s Bengali Bhoj. However, there are plenty of other Bengali dishes on the a la carte menu for lunch and dinner, as well as an array of ‘Daily Specials’ which includes my favourite part of a meal - the desserts.
Going beyond the usual Bengali sweets that find their way everywhere, Canteen’s Bengali Bhoj had some really unique ones on offer. I settled for the Dinni’s Bhapa Doi, a rare Bengali delicacy – steamed yoghurt pudding with biscuit crumble, which invariably reminded me of a cheesecake, only more desi and richer. As I quickly finished it, licking my fingers an inappropriate amount, I realise its sweetness is a metaphor to the amount of love and passion that had gone in the creation of this entire meal that went beyond just food to translate into an immersive cultural experience. Discussing the quirky idiosyncrasies of Bengalis, Iti’s first memories from the kitchen as a ten-year-old, many years prior to her career as an aviation professional at British Airways, her marriage into a vegetarian non-Bengali family that led her to discover the variety of vegetarian food, being the official host of the Travelling Spoon, penning a storybook on Bengali cuisine, it’s amply clear that her love for food has shaped her life in major ways. And now, her delicious homely creations have travelled all the way to Mumbai only to find a perfect home within Bombay Canteen’s philosophy of working with regional Indian cuisine. As Iti puts it best, “For Bengalis, the canteen’s Bengali Bhoj is a journey down memory lane but for the Non-Bengalis, it is an adventure into unknown lands.”
The Bombay Canteen’s Bengali Bhoj began on May 28th and is running till the 10th of June 2018.
Time: Lunch: 12 pm to 3.30 pm (a la carte) Dinner: 7 pm to 11:30 pm (a la carte). Bengali Bhoj (limited seats; minimum two people; only on pre-order) Rs. 1600 plus taxes for vegetarian and Rs 1800 plus taxes for non-vegetarian). To pre-order call 022-49666666
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