Trincas Revives Live Music Format Lost from Indian Dining Floors Over Half a Century Ago
Trincas is the only Indian restaurant rebuilding it.
With the addition of new weekday lunch band Island Breeze, the 99-year-old Park Street institution becomes the only restaurant in India today programming live music four times a day, across four genres, every day of the week.
Trincas Kolkata has restored a music-programming model that disappeared from the Indian dining floor more than half a century ago: four sets of live music a day, every day of the week, across four genres.
The format was once central to Park Street’s identity. In the 1960s, Park Street was the city’s premier high street and entertainment district. The day at Trincas moved to live music. Morning coffee sessions ran into lunchtime performances, tea dances, and late-evening post-theatre shows. As small-room live music economies thinned across India and venues shifted to recorded sound, the four-session format went with them. In 2026, Trincas is the only Indian restaurant rebuilding it.
The New Lunch Hour: Island Breeze
The format returns with the addition of Island Breeze, a new weekday lunch band performing Monday through Friday from 1:30 to 3:30 PM. Built around emerging young musicians from Kolkata, the collective plays easy-listening sets that reinterpret familiar songs through Latin, swing, bossa nova and reggae arrangements.
The set list moves from Amy Winehouse’s Valerie in Latin rhythms to Fever in swing, La Bamba, Hey Jude in bossa nova, and I’m Yours in reggae. Led by the brassy attack of a trumpet and layered with piano-driven arrangements, Island Breeze introduces a fresh lunchtime sound to Park Street dining.
The new lunch programming builds on Trincas’s Weekend Jazz Lunches, launched five years ago, which have since become a fixture of the Kolkata live-music calendar.
The Full Daily Schedule
1:30 – 3:30 PM · Latin & Jazz · Island Breeze (Mon–Fri)
6:00 – 9:00 PM · Hindi retro & contemporary · live Hindi band
7:30 – 10:30 PM · Bengali rock & folk · Tavern-Behind-Trincas
9:00 – 11:00 PM · Western pop, retro & contemporary · live Western band
Bengali rock and folk take centre stage at Tavern-Behind-Trincas, the listening room secreted behind the main restaurant, which has hosted occasional appearances by some of the biggest names in Bengali music.
Members of Island Breeze
Arya Mukherjee · Aneesha Seth · Aditya Servaiia · Srinjoy Ghatak · Amir Rizvi · Surojit Basumallick
