Almost there

This restaurant caters to the food hungry Bengali junta in and around Vignan Nagar but falls a bit short on the authenticity

Just as you will find a darshini, mess or a tiffin room around every other corner in any locality in Bangalore, chances are that you will run into a Bengali restaurant too these days.
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Catering to the Bhadralok craving food that resembles their mother's cooking back home, these restaurants have mushroomed all over the city.
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In the recent years, the city has been overrun not only with Bengalis but also with chains of Bengali restaurants rivaling numbers even in Kolkata.

Kolkata Kitchen is a stand-alone restaurant that caters to the island that begins after the BEML gates beyond Thippasandra.
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If you are too lazy to head to Indiranagar where a considerable number of Kolkata joints exist, this might be your best bet.

A big red bus greets you as you enter this little slice of Kolkata. Faux stained glass lamps and sepia-toned photographs and memorabilia from the City of Joy adorn the walls.

The restaurant offers Bengali style meals, Kolkata-style Chinese food as well as savoury snacks that are available in the evenings.
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From mutton and chicken rolls to fish fries to devil eggs (boiled eggs stuffed with spicy potato and batter fried) to even kebabs, there is enough to fill your plate.

The restaurant goes easy on the grease factor and churns out a healthier version of these savouries.

We started our meal with luchi (Rs 7 per piece), a Bengali puffed pastry made of flour with aloo bhaja (Rs 20), thinly sliced slivers of potatoes fried till crispy and garnished with rock salt.
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The luchi was a big disappointment. Any self respecting Bengali will turn his nose down at luchis made of wheat instead of the golden, fluffy almost-white luchis made of flour he or she is used to.

The aloo bhaja was delicious and turned out to be a good accompaniment to the Mooger Daal (Rs 35), moong dal dry roasted and cooked with a tempering of cumin and ghee and Potol Poshto (Rs 80), a vegetarian dish of gourd and poppy seed paste that we ordered next with rice.

The Potol Poshto was not what we were expecting, instead of the thin slices of gourd shallow fried and cooked with poppy paste, the chunks of the vegetable tasted raw.

The daal was finger licking good though.

The Mutton Kosha (Rs 110), chunks of meat cooked till tender in a dark, slightly sweet caramelised onion gravy was just the way it should have been and was perfect for mopping up with the leftover luchis and the rice.
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Our order of Chingri Malaikari (Rs 100), prawns dunked in an aromatic coconut milk and garam masala gravy was a disappointment though.

The gravy was too thickened with coconut paste instead of the usual sublime coconut milk that takes this signature Bengali dish to another level.

The Kalo Jaam (Rs 12 a piece), a Bengali version of the Gulab Jamun was big, syrupy and just the end we wanted for our Bengali meal.

Though Kolkata Kitchen is not exactly food from your mother's kitchen, it is worth mentioning that it does the trick when you are craving a hearty Bengali meal after a hard day's work.

And we are not complaining either.

At Kolkata Kitchen, 2nd floor, Monitha Mansion, Vignan Nagar
Call 4096 1776
Meal for two Rs 350
Kolkata Kitchen didn't know we were there. The GUIDE reviews anonymously and pays for meals