A Feast for Noboborsho: Chef Apar Chatterjee Brings Alive the Flavours of Bengal

“We are going to start off with some telebhaja,” he said. “‘Fried in oil’ in Bengali—this refers to a whole category of fried snacks. This course is called telebhaja, and it’s a very quintessential snack item for the evenings. I would like to share some of my evenings with this in the local shops.”

The first course opened with Chana Bora, a vegetarian delight made with homemade cottage cheese—“pressed, seasoned with green chillies and salt, and then fried.” Next came the Gondhoraj murgi cutlet, “chicken and potato filling, flavoured with gondhoraj lime—that’s a very aromatic lemon,” he explained. The platter continued with vegetable chop, made with seasonal vegetables—potatoes, beetroot, carrots, green peas—and macher chop, stuffed with a mix of bhetki and lote machh (Bombay duck), dry-cooked and packed with flavour. “So this entire kind of food—the refried kind—is called chop and cutlet.”

“This salad is also a particular kind that you only get with cutlets in West Bengal,” he smiled, pointing to the plate of sliced onions, carrot, beetroot and cucumber.”

And that was just the beginning. “It’s like a Bengali household meal,” he said, adding, “The first thing we take is aam kasundi, a mustard paste mixed with raw mango. It keeps the body cool and helps digestion.” The next set of dishes included Shaak bhaja (spinach), kumro bhaja (pumpkin), and begun bhaja (eggplant)—fried in keeping with the Bengali tradition of serving an odd number of bhajas for festive occasions.

Moving into the non-vegetarian section, Chef Apar presented a spread that spoke of both heritage and comfort. “We have chicken dak bungalow, a colonial-era dish with eggs, potatoes, and chicken in a light stew. Then there’s chingri malai curry, a celebratory prawn dish cooked with coconut flesh—it’s on the sweeter side with a very good flavour of prawns.”

Fish lovers were treated to pabda maach or butterfish, “cooked with mustard, onions and garlic—soft, buttery, one-fish-on-the-bone kind of dish,” and a boneless version for easier eating. There was also echorer dalna, “raw jackfruit cooked with prawn head stew. It has the background note of prawns but is essentially a vegetable dish,” says the chef.

The vegetarian fare stood tall on its own. On the table were steamed rice with aloo pyaz sabzi, bhaja moong dal—a smaller, golden aromatic grain called shona moong dal, cooked with seasonal vegetables. And lau ghonto—bottle gourd with mustard oil, coconut and potatoes.

And then came the “primordial dish,” as he fondly called it—shukto. It’s a seasonal vegetable stew made of drumsticks, brinjals, radish, potatoes, carrots—finished with a bit of coconut and milk.

To finish, came the chutneys and the sweets. “In Bengali tradition, chutneys are usually eaten at the end. We had four otpions—aam chutney with raw mango, tomato chutney, and plastic chutney made with raw papaya that looks like plastic once grated, khejur aamsotto chutney with dates, raisins and aam papad, all cooked with panch phoron.

And finally, the desserts, of course! Mishti boondi, Gobindobhog payesh, mishti doi were the perfect end to the hearty feast. For those still hungry, there was also Kolkata-style mutton biryani on the way.

The noboborsho dinner at ITC Kohenur’s Golconda Pavilion wasn’t just a dinner—it was a heartfelt journey through Bengal’s culinary heritage, made personal and evocative by Chef Apar’s stories and lovingly plated nostalgia.

The special Bengali dinner is on till April 19.