Oh fish!

November 18th, 2008  |  Published in Eating, Food, Living  |  10 Comments

A review of the newly opened Oh Calcutta

Being a fish (and food) lover, it doesn’t take much to entice me for a meal. Espe­cially a Ben­gali meal, since it’s the clos­est I can get to an Assamese meal. I am on a sort of cook­ing sab­bat­i­cal, so find­ing new restau­rants to try out also helps a lot.

So a week or so ago, when I heard that the famous Ben­gali restau­rant chain, Oh Cal­cutta, was open­ing its doors in Ban­ga­lore, I imme­di­ately called my fel­low fish lover, Aqua and we were hatch­ing plans for a first visit. Oh Cal­cutta has branches in Cal­cutta, Mum­bai and Delhi and has now made an entry into Ban­ga­lore.

There was hardly any­one when I walked in : obvi­ously the news has not spread far and wide yet. A rar­ity : to walk in and find a place imme­di­ately : and have the staff really atten­tive to you! I had sev­eral help­ful staff guid­ing me to a table as soon as I entered.

I had heard a lot about the mang­sho (lamb), so that was def­i­nitely on my agenda (and my plate). And fish, of course. Going to a Ben­gali restau­rant and not eat­ing fish is like walk­ing into a bar and order­ing a diet pepsi.

The décor is rather under­stated. No exper­i­men­ta­tion here : they have stuck to a sober cream and dark wood fin­ish to give it a warm feel. One of the walls has some nice pho­tographs of Cal­cutta on it and so do the coast­ers and plates : all with illus­trated line draw­ings of sig­na­ture mon­u­ments like the Howrah Rail­way sta­tion and Vic­to­ria Memorial.

Aqua joined in a while later, while I took some time to soak in my sur­round­ings. Once she joined in, we set­tled into our com­fort­able seats and stud­ied our rather volu­mi­nous menus start­ing with an aam porar shorbot : made of raw mango : it’s a tangy and sweet drink : nice to start off the meal.

From Restau­rants — Bangalore

For the first course, we had the kashor mang­sho, luchis and aloo dum. I must say that the mang­sho was super — the masala was deli­cious and made for the per­fect com­bi­na­tion along with the fluffy luchi. My only com­plaint : we got mostly bones and so I com­plained. They then brought us some nice meaty pieces. The aloo dum was okay, noth­ing very special.

Suf­fi­ciently stuffed (but we still had to order fish!) we went on to our main course : steamed mus­tard ill­ish (bone­less), a fried moong dal and rice. The fish was soft and flavour­ful and the dal was quite nicely done with a rather nice (fried) taste. We fin­ished off the meal with some kheer : if you have a sweet tooth, you’ll enjoy this one.

From Restau­rants — Bangalore

There a lot more on offer : for starters : Chana koraoishutir chop (185), badami aloo (185, baby pota­toes mar­i­nated in mus­tard, chill­ies and 5 spices, wrapped in banana leaves and steamed), smoked hilsa (420), crumb fried prawn (425), fish fry (265), murg aam kashundi paturi (260, chicken mar­i­nated in mus­tard, chill­ies, tangy mango and mus­tard and grilled in banana leaves).

From Restau­rants — Bangalore

From the entrees sec­tion, there is the koraishutir dhoka dalna (195, green pea cakes sim­mered in sharp gin­ger flavoured curry), cholar dal (110), Cal­cutta bekti (410), bhapa ilish bone­less (495, what we had), daab chin­gri (425), rui macher dum jhol (145), murgi malai curry (225)

For the accom­pa­ni­ments you can choose luchis, rice, pulao or parathas (35–150). The desserts : malpua, mishti doi, kheer, Oh Cal­cutta sun­dae etc. are between 40–90.e

While it com­pared well to the other Ben­gali place I fre­quent, 6 Bal­ly­gunge Place, I would stick to the lat­ter for more reg­u­lar Ben­gali fare because of the cost fac­tor. But if you’re a food and fish lover, it’s a must try at least once!

Bot­tom line: Great food, nice ambi­ence
Price: Expen­sive, we paid around 700 per per­son for what we ate (might be lesser if you leave out the starters)
Down­side: No alco­hol
Loca­tion: St Marks Road
Valet park­ing: Yes

Responses

1. Aqua says:
   

   November 18th, 2008 at 10:34 am (#)

   Onita…I can’t believe we went to the same restau­rant and you came away with so much infor­ma­tion while my take-away was just the pleas­ant after-taste of payesh. You cer­tainly have an eye for detail.

   Lovely review! Anjan Chat­ter­jee should pay you for this review (con­sid­er­ing there hardly are any reviews of Oh Cal­cutta online).

   which reminds me, we have yet to ‘do’ the dou­ble road avatar of Ballygunge.

2. Anita says:
   

   November 18th, 2008 at 1:07 pm (#)

   @ aqua: hehe! i think that’s because i really enjoy my food ;-)

   thank you and i hope mr chat­ter­jee is read­ing this! but it’s early days yet.

   yes, yes! always game, you know :-)

3. Which main? What cross? says:
   

   November 18th, 2008 at 5:15 pm (#)

   How dif­fer­ent is assamese food from bengali?

4. Pamela says:
   

   November 20th, 2008 at 12:21 am (#)

   Hi Anita,
   Hope you remem­ber me.Well, very nice review on restu­rant. I wanted to know is it cal­cutta bekti as accord­ing to me it should be cal­cutta betki…isn’t it?

5. Pawan says:
   

   November 21st, 2008 at 9:50 am (#)

   Oh Cal­cutta have set up shop in Pune as well. The bhetki is divine. very sub­tle. they dont slather it with an array of masala like they do in other restau­rants. Loved it. Burnt a hole in pocket though. The bhetki, steamed rice and an aam porar shorbot came to 700 bucks. They are start­ing a lunch buf­fet here in pune. That prob­a­bly will be more value for money

6. lostonthestreet says:
   

   November 23rd, 2008 at 3:10 pm (#)

   I just love the O Cal­cutta here in Mumbai.As you rightly pointed out,whenever I miss Assamese food, I make a trip there.I had the buf­fet there dur­ing puja time and my bf swears he never saw me hog like that..btw have u seen this site?www.assamesecuisine.com

7. S.C.Chand says:
   

   November 23rd, 2008 at 5:28 pm (#)

   Dont you thinks 700 rs is expensive.With a lot of peo­ple in india still starv­ing you spend 700 rs of lux­u­ri­ous food.

8. shalini says:
   

   November 26th, 2008 at 4:21 pm (#)

   hey anita a very nice review..will go and try it out.…though i do not have a very high opin­ion about the place because of my exper­ince in going to the one in Delhi.

   I thought their serv­ing also was less…

   but just the way you described it makes me to go and visit it again.…and yes I think the own­ers should give u a share in their earn­ing as you are get­ting unhappy cus­tomers like me going to visit them beca­sue of hav­ing read yr review.

9. Anita says:
   

   December 1st, 2008 at 11:02 am (#)

   @ Which main? What cross?:
   let me put it this way. there are sim­i­lar­i­ties. the fore­most being the use of mus­tard oil in prepa­ra­tions. we also eat a lot of fish.

   @ Pamela: hope you are well! we must do ben­gali food some­time soon! actu­ally, in ben­gali it’s called betki but in eng­lish its called bekti — not sure why!

   @ Pawan: the buf­fet might be for VFN! but i’ve also noticed when these places do buf­fets, they aren’t very good!

   @ loston­thestreet: they have a buf­fet there? hope they start it here too and hope it’s good! i will check it out! thanks for the link :-)

   @ S.C.Chand: it is expen­sive. and i men­tioned it. i don’t really buy that logic. if we did, we would all be walk­ing to work and eat­ing raagi for break­fast. what i do with my per­sonal pref­er­ences, time and money is totally my busi­ness, not any­one else’s.

   @ shalini: you eat less! you should be com­plain­ing :-) next time, go with the 2 experts!
   i think i should ask them for a com­mis­sion when they visit their restau­rant via me!

10. kamalesh deka says:
    

    December 8th, 2008 at 5:53 pm (#)

    indeed a very nice review on restu­rant.
    kashor mang­sho??? that endan­gered species turtle????

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