Kolkata is a melting pot of cultural diversity. It has embraced migrants from different parts of the world and made them its own. One such community is the Chinese community that first set foot in the city during the British rule. Since it was the capital of the country, many Chinese families got attracted to settle here. And that is how the Chinese settlement came to existence in the central part of Kolkata. In this blog we will take you on a journey to explore some of the popular street foods across the Chinese settlements including Tiretti Bazar and Tangra. To guide us about the locality, cultural scenes and the food, we were joined by our gracious and dynamic host Pamela Das.
We started the tour early in the morning from Teritti Bazar. The place is known for the daily morning street market where one can find numerous traditional Chinese breakfast items. These are mostly prepared and sold by the Chinese families living across the locality. On Sundays the crowd swells up with food enthusiasts thronging the place for pork baos, sui pao, sauces and condiments etc.
Our picks included pork bao, rice pudding, fried rice balls, sweet crispy rajma stuffed bun, pork pastry, meatball soup and prawn papad. Of these the best thing was the sweet rajma stuffed bun and the least pleasant one was the meatball soup as it was too bland.
After the heavy breakfast we moved to Tangra which is known as the new Chinatown. Apart from the numerous factories and units, this place had earned the reputation of being a hub for great traditional Chinese food. Most of the iconic eateries over here are family run. Though their ambience is unpretentious, their food is much coveted. Here we tried wonton noodles or the singhara chow as the Bengali’s call it at two different places. At the first place Ahyusen, we saw how the noodles were being using a tedious, ancient noodle making technique which was so fascinating. At the second place, Ah Yung, the wonton noodles were bit more flavourful and robust.
After that hearty wonton trail we arrived at our final destination Eau Chew which is deemed as the oldest family run eatery in the city. Here we tried two of their hot selling dishes named Chimney Soup and Josephine Noodles. The sensational names got us excited.
Chimney soup was a lightly seasoned broth containing eggs, chicken, prawn and vegetables. The unique thing about this dish is the brass vessel in which it was served. It has burning charcoal inside it. There was a chimney-like outlet through which the heat dissipated. Josephine noodles on the other hand was pan fried noodles that had miscellaneous ingredients. Both the dishes were super yummy. With that hearty meal and warm conversations with the owners at Eau Chew, we came to the end of this delightful tour.
