Chef Asma Khan joins Condé Nast Traveler as she returns to her hometown of Kolkata to rediscover the flavors, rituals, and emotions that shaped her love of food. From iconic restaurants like Kwality to authentic Bengali thalis at Taj Bengal, experience Kolkata’s vibrant culinary scene.
00:00A lot of people say Bengali sweets are too sweet.
00:02What is too sweet? I don't think anything you like too sweet.
00:04My sweetness threshold is massive.
00:06Hello, I'm Asma Khan.
00:08I'm going to take you to all my favourite places in Kolkata, my hometown.
00:16There is a ritual and a rhythm in how you eat in Bengal.
00:20This is where the chefs eat.
00:27We are in qualities.
00:29This is an iconic restaurant of Kolkata.
00:32It is a restaurant that you cannot miss.
00:35It is literally the heartbeat, the soul of the city.
00:39This is my childhood.
00:40It reminds you of all the happy times.
00:42That age of innocence and that time of joy when you were young,
00:46when you were with parents coming to a place like this,
00:48those were the best days of your lives.
00:50You don't realise that till it's gone.
00:52So thank God there are places like this that are still there,
00:54that you can come back to.
00:55And for all my friends, many of us have left the city.
00:59This is a homecoming.
01:00This is a place where you come with an empty stomach and an open heart.
01:04I get the chana batura to start with.
01:07So this is like the perfect batura.
01:10The only way to eat this is to make a hole in it.
01:14Oh my God.
01:14A lot of skill has gone into this.
01:20The chana is just so earthy.
01:22I love the aloo, which is a potato in this.
01:26And the lime is really important.
01:27The lime brings in this kind of zing into it.
01:31Takes me back to being a child.
01:34It is all these kind of layers of flavours that come in,
01:39which is what makes this dish so special.
01:42I'm eating with my hands because that is the way that all of us eat in India.
01:46Cutlery was something that was bought in by outsiders.
01:50There is something very healing when you eat with your hands
01:53and you enjoy your food more.
01:54I'm going to start off with the chicken bharata
02:00because this is a very Calcutta thing
02:03and qualities particularly does it very, very well.
02:07The chicken is shredded.
02:09There are no bones to it.
02:10And I love this with plain naan.
02:16Rogan Josh with bone.
02:18This is a Kashmiri dish.
02:19It's cooked on the bone.
02:20The chicken has really, really beautiful, beautiful smoky chilli aroma to it.
02:28And this, of course, is butter chicken.
02:31Originated in Delhi.
02:33This place, because of its kind of Punjabi links and Delhi links,
02:36they do a really proper version of butter chicken.
02:39So this is Lal Mirj Paratha.
02:41Lal Mirj is red chillies.
02:42There's a real kick to this paratha.
02:44It's made on the tandoor.
02:46And all these kind of, you know, little burnt bits add a unique smokiness to it.
02:52That is garlic naan.
02:54This is a butter naan.
02:56Each one has its kind of own distinctive flavor.
02:59You need to kind of work out which is your favorite.
03:01And I have not worked out my favorite.
03:02So I'm very bad.
03:03I ordered all three.
03:04No one's judging you.
03:05So you can do the same.
03:06I find it very difficult when I listen to people in the West calling our food curry.
03:13Curry is not a word that I recognize because every dish has its own name, has its own flavor.
03:20It's like a symphony.
03:21Everything is like an instrument, each one playing together.
03:24That is the richness of our cuisine.
03:26And just to call it curry and rice is really missing the point.
03:29So this is the Tutti Frutti.
03:38Incredibly, it actually tastes better than it looks.
03:41It's this pink, beautiful glass full of kind of ice cream and syrup and fruits.
03:46Deep down in the bottom, there's jelly.
03:48And you just cut through it.
03:50And as it melts, it gets better and better.
03:53Nothing disappoints.
03:55And that makes, you know, visiting quality magical.
03:59Everybody knows me for my restaurant in England.
04:03But the roots of that restaurant cross the ocean.
04:06They're being nourished here, in this city, in this land.
04:09That's where all the inspiration, the joy and the desire to cook comes from.
04:14Now, I'm really excited to take you to my next favorite restaurant.
04:25We are in Sonargao, which is in Taj, Bengal.
04:28But the food I love eating in Sonargao is their Bengali food.
04:32My favorite is coming here, having the thali.
04:35It allows me to go through this journey of flavors and spices.
04:39A thali is basically, it's a platter.
04:42It's a Hindi word for a very flat plate.
04:45It's not just one item.
04:47It's an array of little, little things that you mix and match and you eat together.
04:50But I plan and aim to come here hungry so that I can have the whole thali.
04:55So, this is Bengal presented to us in this beautiful way.
05:00There is a ritual and a rhythm in how you eat in Bengal.
05:03Because you start off with things that are bitter.
05:05It releases the salivas, your body, everything gets ready for the richer part.
05:10So, you eat in this particular way.
05:13This is a very Bengali way of eating.
05:15This, before I eat, is a very famous aloo posto.
05:19That's poppy seed and potatoes.
05:20Sounds very simple.
05:22It's a very complex dish.
05:25So, this of course is bhekti.
05:27It's just hard to describe.
05:30I yearn, yearn for this fish when I'm in England.
05:34This is very special.
05:36This is paturi.
05:38This is steamed fish.
05:39It's super moist because it's been wrapped in banana leaf.
05:42This is dab chingri.
05:44This is cooked in the coconut water inside the shell.
05:48It's an art to get something so soft and so delicate.
05:52When the cameras are off, I'm going to sit and eat everything and it's all going to be clean.
05:56And I know that in the West, often people give papadum and chutney at the beginning.
05:59You eat this at the end of your meal.
06:01The spices in there, things like fennel and onion seed, all of this is medicinal.
06:08This will help you digest everything you've eaten.
06:10This is your palate cleanser because after you've had all of this, you still have this
06:15left to eat, which is the sweet dishes.
06:17This is completely classic Bengali dessert.
06:20The jaggery has been used to sweeten the outside, but hidden in there, as a little surprise,
06:26is this molten golden nulegur.
06:29This tastes of earth.
06:32It tastes of wood, of forest.
06:33It tastes of all the beauty that you live around in this green land, which is Bengal.
06:39Now, to the mishti roi.
06:41For me, this is yogurt.
06:42Sweet, dense, intense.
06:46And now, the rasgulla.
06:48Again, it has this beautiful kind of inner filling, which has its own different flavor in it.
06:53A lot of people say, Bengali sweets are too sweet.
06:55What is too sweet?
06:56I don't think anything you like too sweet.
06:57My sweetness threshold is massive.
07:01My favorite part of the thali is the fact that I can revisit something and add something else to it.
07:07It allows you to be like a composer.
07:10You're sitting there, you're making music, you're picking and choosing what you want.
07:13And also, the choice, you know.
07:15Something you particularly like, just finish the whole thing in one go.
07:17Calcutta has changed, but the street life, the street food, is still as vibrant and as beautiful as I remember it.
07:27It's modernizing, but thank God they've left the food behind.
07:32I guess you've got to leave to understand what it feels like to come home.
07:37I was lost, and food was my way home.
07:41And I still get emotional about this, but when I cooked food from Kolkata, I felt my mother was next to me.
07:52It is that powerful.
07:54It's when you cook with that kind of feeling and emotion, the food tastes incredible.
07:59It's just incredible.
08:07Beren Aminia, this is just behind New Market, which is this beautiful, iconic, covered market in Kolkata.
08:16Interestingly, it opened on the 15th of August, 1947.
08:20That was the day India became independent, free from the British.
08:25This is when this restaurant was opened.
08:27I think it says a lot that this is as old as India.
08:34This is the paratha, which is hard to replicate.
08:38When you see the softness inside and the crispiness outside, they have perfected this over decades.
08:45This is a chicken chop and mutton chop.
08:48The separation of the oil indicates that it has been slowly cooked, which is called, we call bhuna.
08:55There's poppy seeds in here.
08:57There's a lot of crispy onions in there.
08:59There's masalas.
09:00So now the mutton chop is a style of cooking.
09:03It's always on the bone.
09:05And again, the paratha is very important.
09:07The way it has been made, it has this crispy texture.
09:10You need the paratha to have this kind of a texture because it's going to be soaked with all this very, very beautifully made gravy and it needs to hold that gravy.
09:20So here's the legendary Kolkata biryani.
09:24Hidden in there is the mutton and more excitingly, the potato.
09:31I want to honk back at them.
09:32Anyway, this is what makes Kolkata biryani so unique.
09:36The additional potato.
09:37It's absorbed all the spices, all the flavors of the meat and sitting in there like a sponge, it has sucked it all in.
09:46Meat that is cooked in this very slow way, buried with rice.
09:50It's so unique and it's delicate, it's light, it's fragrant and it is very, very subtle.
09:57But do not confuse subtlety with simplicity.
10:00This is not a simple dish.
10:02It's probably the best biryani that you get in this part of the world.
10:05Food is the language of love.
10:08Food is also a language of where you come from.
10:12In this biryani, in each grain, there is a story.
10:16It tells us about our history.
10:19It tells us who you are.
10:21And that is why it is so important.
10:24This is the dessert.
10:26This is a terracotta base in which this finni is set.
10:30So the base of this is milk and rice.
10:35But please do not call this a rice pudding.
10:38You can literally see it's so smooth.
10:40All the rice is broken down.
10:42And in that smoothness, there are spices that go through.
10:47And the terracotta.
10:48It is definitely an ingredient in this.
10:51This is a kulfi.
10:56Kulfi is much more complex than just an ice cream.
11:00Kulfi is a lot thicker, more textured.
11:04It actually feels like a privilege to eat something like this.
11:08Because as someone who cooks, I understand the labor that has gone into this.
11:12It's a labor of love.
11:13I am what I am today because of Kolkata.
11:18Because of the food of Kolkata.
11:20The biryani, the chaap.
11:22All this wonderful food of the city and its people.
11:25we have a great day.
11:25We have a great day.
11:26We have a great day.
11:27We have a great day.
11:28We have a great day.
11:29We have a great day to live on the website.
11:31It's a rich culture.
11:33It's a wonderful day.
11:34This wonderful food of the city.
11:34We have completely experts that have 제가 fuchsia Dartmouth on the spot.
11:36This is my family area.
11:36This is my family area.
11:38I am doing a good day.
11:40This 너무 busy while promoting people.
11:42People can always go in school.
11:42It's a very nice environment.
11:44This is my family area.
11:45Here she is in school.
11:46We have a beautiful beautiful country.
11:50Our family area area.
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