Esplanade remains one of our top choices in Bangalore to get some authentic Bengali food and when we heard that they were doing a pop-up menu this month, we were intrigued. This is mainly because all their pop-ups have been nothing short of a hit. The Cabin Culture is a month-long pop-up that will take you through a culinary journey of some of Kolkata's famous cabin restaurants. For the uninitiated (this writer including), cabin restaurants started out in the late 60s as the go-to spot to have some major catch up session and the likes over some good food (read: mutton cutlets and kasundi).
At Esplanade, the menu features dishes that have been inspired by some of Kolkata's famous cabin restaurants. We started with the humble staple of vegetable chop that was served with kasundi. Crispy and not too oily, we finished this off in seconds. Next up was the Prawn Kobiraji, which is something we've never tried. It's crumbly prawn cutlet fried in ghee and topped off with the flakeist egg nest. It's savoury max and meant for sharing. The Cabin-style fish roll was finished as soon as it arrived before the stars of the night came out. The Mutton Afghani Cutlet was a fiery cutlet that featured a spicy mutton cultet topped with a spicy gravy. No, this wasn't the star of the night, but it was sort of the final opening act.
The first star of the night was the Mangsher Ghooghni with Toast, which was a banger from the start. You get a dried yellow peas curry with tender mutton cubes that you top off with tamarind and black salt before mopping up all that curry with the softest toast. We could go for seconds any day. The second and final star of the night (we were stuffed by then) was Dalpuri with Aloor Tarkari. We went to bed thinking about the puffy puris and that dreamy aloo curry that had such melt-in-the-mouth boiled potatoes and such a balanced curry.
While we might not visit Kolkata's OG cabins anytime soon, we're definitely going back to Esplanade for more.
When: Until 2 October
Time: For lunch and dinner
Price: A la carte prices
