Where to eat Bengali traditional food: 6 must-visit places

Bengali cuisine is more layered than the rice and fish. From pice hotels to home chefs, these six places across India to taste the real thing

6 Ballygunge Place, Kolkata, Delhi

Every Bengali meal starts with something that’s either bitter like shukto or pora and bharta, followed by a lentil-based course with something fried. Then the meats, fish, and vegetables take over.

Peetuk, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune

Daily meals in Bengali households include Chapati and Chicken Kosha, or Half Kolkata Egg Biryani with raita, or kichuri with an omelette.

Kewpie's, Kolkata

Celebratory dishes like mutton kosha (mutton curry), chicken dak bungalow (a colonial twist to a chicken or mutton curry), Ilish macher jhal, and chingri malai curry sit alongside pantry staples like kasundi and Gondhoraj lemon.

Hotel Tarun Niketan, Kolkata

Bengali traditional cuisine has a vast vegetarian repertoire. This pice hotel serves dishes such as baigun bhaja, which are crucial to Bengali meals.

Charubon’s, Bengaluru

Bengali traditional food is largely mustard-forward cuisine–oil, seeds, paste, and leaves, paired with posto (poppy seed paste), ginger, and cumin.

Spices and Friends (cloud kitchen), Mumbai, Thane

Dessert carries its own weight, which go beyond Rasogolla. The real draw of this cloud kitchen is the sweets-Lobongo Lotika, Gur’er Payesh, and Gur’er Sandesh.

The adaptation of Bengali traditional food

As younger generations have left to work in cities outside, they’ve carried their cuisine and adapted according to the unavailability of ingredients. Like replacing bottle gourd leaves with Bok Choy, or making peyaz posto bites more suited for supper clubs like Toonika Guha's.