Bangla cuisine to woo the West

FOOD: Bengali restaurant chains plan big to get the Brits hooked to authentic Bengali cuisine.

This one's for the NRBs, "" non-resident Bengalis "" who would give anything for their daily shukto and machher jhol. There's succour coming their way, as Bengali food entrepreneurs take a cue from the success(es) of their counterparts in north and south India and open shop on foreign shores.

Bhojohori Manna, a chain of Bengali restaurants named after the mythical gourmand immortalised in song by Manna Dey, is opening shop in Dhaka first and then London by early next year.

Says Siddhartha Chatterjee, one of the five promoters, "For a long time, our regular NRB clients have been saying that if we could maintain the standard we would do very well abroad."

It is some of these enthusiasts who will be sharing the investment as also taking care of the local end of things for the 40-45 seater London outlet of Bhojohori Manna.

There's also Anjan Chatterjee who has been talking of opening an Oh! Calcutta outlet in the British capital for a long time now. Chatterjee had even bought 5,000 square feet in Wimbledon, but a dispute had delayed the actual opening. "We will be opening, definitely, by Poila Boishakh (the Bengali New Year)."

Palates in the West have long been won over by Indian cuisine. Besides the numerous curry houses, balti restaurants and take aways run primarily by Bangladeshis, both London and New York have a number of fine-dining Indian restaurants offering "authentic" cuisines from the various regions of the country to the discriminating.

But barring the odd exception like Calcutta Notebook in Britain and Babu (which recently closed down) in the Big Apple, Bengali cuisine has not travelled much abroad.

Chatterjee of Oh! Calcutta feels there is no reason why this should continue. "Bengali food is not oily, and that is its biggest USP. Besides, it allows you to experiment a lot with flavours. At Oh! Calcutta we've truly worked to develop a global cuisine "" for example, the boneless ilish paturi."

So what prevents this "global cuisine" from taking the world by storm? Chatterjee talks of one major problem: the incremental cost of flying out the fresh fish every day, which would drive up prices greatly. Indeed, Chatterjee flies out his supplies of fresh sweet-water bhetki for all his Oh! Calcutta outlets.

This is the reason why Bhojohori Manna, which already has four outlets in Kolkata with plans of opening another three in the next year, has not ventured into other Indian cities. "A Bengali in Bangalore will grudge paying Rs 200 for his ilish, when he knows he can get it for Rs 60 in Kolkata."

But in London, Chatterjee expects his revenues to be far higher "" even taking into account the higher input costs. "Besides, we plan to start small. We needn't have all 40 varieties of fish that we have here. We will start with a few, less bone-filled ones and then add as we go on."

Chatterjee will find a ready clientele in the large Bengali population in Britain who'll be more than happy for a taste of home food. But will it be a hit with the others? Now that's a million dollar, sorry pounds, question!