Trincas: Where Park Street Learned to Swing
As Trincas turns 99, Anand Puri looks back at a century of jazz, jackets, and the indelible soundtrack of Park Street.
The iconic Park Street in Kolkata hums with the traffic of the present, but inside Trincas time sits differently. The red carpet has changed shades, the music has changed tempo, the city has changed governments and moods, yet something in the air still feels like 1927. Anand Puri smiles when asked where to begin. “I have lots to talk about,” he says, glancing at the walls crowded with photographs. “Do you see all the stories behind you? These are all stories I have written. I didn’t know any of this information before. I went down that rabbit hole.”
Image by Arrangement
Next year, Trincas turns a hundred. “We are at 99 right now,” he says, almost with disbelief. “My family has been running this place for 67 years. I have done six and a half out of that. I didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes. So I took my time.” What began as a Swiss confectionery and tea room in 1927 was never meant to become a cultural landmark. Two Swiss men, Cinzio Trinca and Joseph Flury, arrived in Calcutta seeking fortune in what was then the second city of the Empire. “Switzerland was poor,” Anand explains. “This was where all the trade was, all the powerful people were, all the trends were taking off.” They opened a tea room on a street that was just beginning to find its swagger.
By 1939 the partners split, and Trinca brought his name to the current address. He ran the bakery through famine, war and Partition. “In 1959 he said, I have had enough. I have lived through famine in Bengal. I have lived through World War II in Bengal. I have lived through Partition. My family is in Switzerland. Me and my wife are sixty something years old. We want to move back.” That same year, Anand’s grandfather Omi Prakash Puri and his friend Ellis Joshua were looking for a place of their own.
“My grandad came from Lahore in 1943. He turned 18 and said, I have to get out and start my life fresh.” At the Grand Hotel he met Joshua from Burma. One learned operations, the other mastered show business. “Uncle Josh knew the music scene. My granddad had been running hotels. It turned into a winning company.”
They bought the tea room and bakery and reimagined it. Going out was changing. It wasn’t just tea and pastry anymore. It was food and live entertainment. They built a stage. By the 1960s, Trincas had become a phenomenon. Park Street became the hub for all of Asia in terms of entertainment. Bombay had prohibition. Calcutta stayed open late. European acts travelling east would pass through Cairo, Karachi, Madras and arrive here before heading to Hong Kong. “There were four music sessions a day. Morning, lunch, tea time and dinner. Live acts every single day,” he says.
Jazz turned to beat music, beat music to rock and roll. Young crowds filled the room. But in those days, there was a strict dress code. “You couldn’t enter if you didn’t have a jacket and tie. There was a rack of extra jackets at the front,” says Anand.
Usha Uthup | Image by Arrangement
On this stage, Usha Uthup began her career. Biddu performed here before reshaping disco abroad. Goan musicians like Chris Perry carried the nightclub sound into Hindi cinema. “When you hear that trumpet or saxophone in an old Hindi movie, that’s the Goan influence. These people played at nightclubs in Calcutta and Bombay.”
The city outside was changing in harsher ways. “Go back to 1911,” Anand says. “Every time power shifted, the city’s power went down.” The famine, the war, the refugee influx after 1947, and the political upheavals of the 60s and 70s. “The 60s was that one last point where it was amazing music, amazing nightlife, living side by side with a very dark ground reality.” Through it all, Trincas survived.
Images by Arrangement
At Trincas, the food carries as much memory as the music. The menu reflects decades of Park Street evolution, classic continental fare that once defined a night out in old Calcutta, comforting Indian favourites, and the Schezwan flavours introduced in the 1980s that became a quiet game-changer for the city’s Chinese dining scene. Regulars still return for their baked dishes, grilled meats, and chilli-garlic-laced specialities that balance nostalgia with boldness. It’s the kind of place where a sizzler arrives at the table with theatre, where cocktails feel old-school, and where every familiar bite tastes like an encore. In 1983, Anand’s father introduced Schezwan cuisine to the city. “There was no Schezwan before that. It was all Hakka and Cantonese. He said it’s chillies and garlic, it’s easy to remember. Why don’t we do it?” The move changed the Chinese dining scene in Kolkata. When a heavy tax forced most venues to shut live music, Trincas continued. It was attached to the idea of music and going out. So it kept going.
Anand Puri
Anand returned in 2019 to mark sixty years of family stewardship. “I came in and looked at it as both insider and outsider. If I wanted to come here, what would I want to see, feel, hear?” He began piecing together history through old photographs and social media. “Someone in Australia recognised himself in a photo and sent me another one. It was like a giant jigsaw puzzle.” He has since documented over 400 musicians who have performed here.
His grandmother’s contribution, he insists, is foundational. “She actually found all the money to buy the restaurant. She would run the bakery in the morning. That was where the money was being made. She organised ladies’ coffee meets, set up raffles, even made achar (pickles) for the restaurant. She added that woman’s touch.” The bakery closed in 1980 amid union troubles and price caps, but her imprint remains.
Images by Arrangement
Today, Trincas is both archive and experiment. Anand revived Sunday jazz in 2001. “I told Willie Walters, I want to start jazz. You have to take charge because I don’t know anything.” The movement grew. In recent years Anand launched weekly LGBTQ karaoke nights. “It’s created a community. You have to share tables, so you talk. It’s one of the few places where girls and boys hang out together.” He introduced Bengali music to the tavern next door. “You are either relevant and trendy or you are historical and fuddy-duddy. This is the unique mix. We have history and relevance.”
Look around and the spectrum is visible. Families, celebrities, foreigners, couples holding hands. Dress codes have softened. Times have changed. Trincas always takes feedback seriously. “I want to improve all the time,” he says. In that restless desire lies the reason Trincas approaches a hundred not as a relic, but as a living room for a city that refuses to forget how to sing.