From working at hotels to losing a job to opening his own chain of restaurants — Chef Ranjan Biswas, the owner of the nine-year-old popular Bengali diner Saptapadi, has seen it all. But all this while, Ranjan dreamt of taking Bengali food to a global platform and now, he is serving never-heard-before
delicacies like Muri Fish Stick, Murgi Chire Chepta, Aam Kasundi Amude, Phoolkopir Mahima, Murgir Ghoti Gorom and Lichu Lankar Payesh to an impressed array of city gourmands.
From a failed project at Bidhan Sarani, Saptapadi now has four outlets in the city, the one at Behala being the latest. They have also started a conceptual buffet called Sutanuti 1910, on the first floor of their Salt Lake outlet, serving the lost recipes of Bengal along with live counters of phuchka, jhalmuri and ghugni with a modern twist.
“When Calcutta was the capital of British India, people from different parts of the world settled here, bringing with them their cultures and culinary practices that became intricately entwined with the local fabric lending Bengali cuisine such a rich variety of flavours,” begins the chef. But with fast modernisation over the past few decades, some of these recipes are slowly getting lost with time. Ranjan precisely aims at preserving that rich and flavourful heritage and gives the recipes modern twists to make them more acceptable with the younger generations.
“We curate the menu in such a way that the look and feel is global but ingredients and flavours are local and seasonal,” he says. “It is probably here only that we see such a sad state of our regional cuisine. Bengali food and pice hotels are almost synonymous. But the cuisine has so much more to offer than mere bhaat, dal and machher jhol. Can you imagine, we even made nachos with mocha (banana flower)? There is no end to innovation, all you need to keep experimenting and serve quality food that matches the palate of your customer,” the chef concludes.