we're in Calcutta India and today's video is gonna be all about some crazy
good street food
we are going to be zipping all around town to find you the best food this city has to offer
Kolkata is a feast for the senses hit the streets and you'll be
met with colour, noise and delicious smells this is our second video from
Kolkata and we're eating some of the city's tastiest eats we head out of the
city to find a legendary Kolkata biryani that has a cult following watch out for
glistening rice, tender mutton and a secret ingredient that sets this dish
apart we indulge in two popular Bengali sweets from shops that are over a
hundred years old and hunt down the city's most famous street food the kati
roll in this India series we'll show you some of the country's most delicious
food from heritage recipes to iconic street food you don't want to miss this
series get ready for some mouth-watering food
I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're Chasing a Plate
we hope you're hungry let's eat
I'm so excited for this day of eating that we have ahead of us so
Thomas and I always want to show you the best local food on this channel and
sometimes if that means we have to travel way outside of the city centers
to do so that's what we do and that's exactly what we're doing right now so
you can probably tell that I'm on a train
we're heading an hour outside of central Kolkata to find what we've heard is a
really delicious local favorite a biryani spot
we've arrived at our destination and it's actually this restaurant right here
the biryani restaurant which has got a huge crowd of people in front of it so
biryani is a rice and meat dish and it's actually check out this cooking
vessel cooked in these big biryani pots over fire and oh there's one which is
just open up here let's see if we can get a bit closer wow ohhh the smell so
this is the chicken biryani you can see the pieces of chicken in there there's
rice it's glistening and the rice is so beautiful and oily looking it's very
fragrant and I can see potatoes in there as well whoa there's a big pot of pickles up
the back too I think we should go and eat go and order
this place is absolutely going off the crowd of people lined up for their
biryani heaps of traffic rolling by something I've noticed that I really
like is because these tubs are so big and so heavy when they're full of rice
they need these poles cause they need four guys to pick them up so they use these
bamboo poles to lug them up and get them up onto the serving trays it is a crazy
good environment and the smell in the air is incredible from the amount of
spice that they've got in those big tubs of biryani
check out this steaming pile of biryani that has just arrived on our table
it is so fragrant and you can see that the rice is just glistening with the oil
from the meat and it's stained from all of the spices that have been added to it
now I'm going to just push it aside and see if I can show you ohhh the mutton
so the mutton really big piece of it and mutton is actually goat here in
India there's a big piece of that it looks very tender the pile
of rice is steaming and then what makes Calcutta biryani different to other
biryani around India is this this spud which is hiding underneath look at
that hot whoa it's hot as anything and to go with the biryani we've also got some
chutney there's a little bit of raw red onion and also some not pickled maybe
just fresh cucumber and this will add some freshness and sort of cut through
the richness of the biriyani all right I've got to shut the hell up and
actually just start eating because the smell of this biryani is just
absolutely intoxicating so I've got a bit of that mutton and then also the rice
hmm holy moly that is amazing a real burst of cardamom
so you can really taste the spice in there it's a little bit spicy from chilli heat
but the overwhelming flavor was from the cardamom that goat is just melt in your mouth
this is out of this world the rice is so loose and light it's got a great
chew to it and that meat is insane so the rice is really really imbued with
the flavor of the spices and it's just glistening with the fat from the meat so
the reason for that is because when they cook the biryani it's cooked dum
style so they put all of the ingredients into that big pot and then
they seal the lid on that pot and then it's cooked over the fire so all the
juices from the meat all of the spices they really just sort of meld together
while it's all cooking and all of the flavors stay infused into the resulting
dish this is insane I've got to break open this potato ouch
ouch ouchawawa that is hot so hot okay so I've got a bit of that potato I mean I might get
some of this cucumber and sort of freshen that mouthful up all right
very creamy potato it's got a lot of flavor so the reason why Kolkata biriyani is
different to the rest of biryani which are around India is because they have
this potato and that's not really common with other types of biryani and the
reason that they have this potato is because back in the day when meat was a
little bit expensive they wanted to bulk out the dish and they used potato and
that tradition has continued and it is a good tradition because that is so
delicious man alive this is just heavenly
the restaurant is completely full now and there are so many people waiting
outside I can see why this is so delicious and I honestly think we're gonna have to order
another I don't want to share this with Thomas at all
we've caught the train back into central Calcutta now Kolkata is the capital of
the state West Bengal in the east of India and what we've learned since
arriving in this amazing city is that Bengalis love their sweets so there are
sweet shops all over Kolkata and that's our next stop a famous sweet shop which
does a treat called rasgulla
shupu shondha
is this the rasgulla? Rasgulla? Oh do you have rasgulla? Yea
can we please get 3 rasgulla, dhonnobad
this sweet shop has been around since
1907 and you can see in the window here they've got a number of different sweets
but the one that we're after is actually the guys were just showing me in the
back there there the rasgulla so rasgulla is made up of a cheese curd and semolina
dough and then it is soaked in a sugar syrup and you can see the huge pots of
rasgulla there's hundreds of them floating in a sugar syrup and we've
got our three rasgulla here
how pretty are the little rasgulla served in this
lovely little clay pottle as well and swimming in sugar syrup you see how much
sugar syrup there is down there so absolutely swimming in that from that
huge tub that they came out of and it's a really lovely little corner store this
is very neighborly neighbor-hoodie feeling part of Kolkata so just
feels like a little neighborhood stall lots of people coming in pulling in on
their motorbikes grabbing some desserts let's rip into one of these so cheese
curd ball basically covered in that sugar syrup whoa can you see the syrup
just squirting out as I try and grab it I'm just gonna stab it and get the whole
thing
whoa hmm that is super interesting I think it looks like you've taken white bread
soaked it in water and made a ball out of it but that is also kind of what it
feels like in your mouth texturally but it's quite spongy as well so it's
got a sponginess like bread but then it's got a bounciness like cheese and
it's not as sweet as I imagined sometimes these desserts here in India
can be crazy sweet this is not too crazy I'm gonna eat this one in half
look at that very ohh it's very
good and you can see inside it's a little bit aerated that beautiful
sweetness and they're very subtle oh watch out almost took out this guy's
motorbike before now there's a car coming
India is hectic I love it it's got a subtleness to it so a subtle cheesy
sort of dairy flavor the sweetness not too intense beautiful
presentation really good little dessert and just a really neat little
neighborhood stall in a really lovely little quiet part of Calcutta just look
at like everything here is insane these cabs you've got the Ambassador cabs
loving this city this is a very good dessert
we've wandered about 15 minutes from our last stop and we're coming up to our
next street food and we're here to eat a dish called a mishti doi it's something
that you have got to eat when you're in Kolkata, Kolkata is very famous for it
it's a fermented sweetened yogurt this is the shop right here it's super cute let's go and
order shupu shondha ek mishti doi dhonnobad
Is it good? Yeah. Yeah, excellent, we heard this shop's
mishti doi was very famous very famous
whoa delicious
the gentleman have served me up my mishti doi in this
beautiful little earthenware cup let's just pop over here to eat it I'm super
excited because when I was ordering I was talking to one of the ladies and she was
saying that this is the place to get it in Kolkata this shop is very
famous for it and look just how thick it is look at that so it's a fermented
yogurt whoa look wow there's sort of like a layer of a skin on the top and then
it's super creamy in the bottom it's very cool to touch so this clay vessel
is ice cold almost let's give it a taste
whoa it tastes like caramel and the top
does have like a thicker skin and underneath it's very silky and creamy
it's quite sweet
hmm oh that is so good I love the light camel color of the
mishti doi
and it's a very unique flavor you'd think being yoghurt it'd be
quite tangy but it's not the overwhelming flavour is one of sweetness and sometimes
they use date molasses to sweeten it sometimes they use just brown sugar and
it's always set in earthenware so like a bigger version of this and what the
earthenware does is that it draws the moisture out the yogurt sets and then it
also creates the right temperature for all the cultures in the yogurt
to do their thing this is really delicious
we've come across town a little bit further for a real icon of street food
here in Kolkata and I can just see the stand
up ahead packed with people smoke pouring out and the smell is unreal so
while we make our way up there I just want to mention how great that little sweet
shop was we just loved it we had three cups of it in the end because it was so
good we met some amazing people and some locals told us that that place had been
there for over a hundred years so a lot of heritage there as well and also they
brought us some other sweets so kind of them and they were super tasty here's
the crowd we're after so this is a kati roll which is a street food
you'll find all over India but you'll particularly find it here in
Kolkata because this is where it comes from
we've just grabbed our kati rolls this stall is really neat it's all
action so it's very compact as you can see it's just a tiny little window on the
footpath everyone's crowded up it always seems to be about three or four
deep and it's raining at the moment everyone's really pushing in there to
get right up to the stand and the smell is unbelievable so the guy in the red
polo shirt up the back he's cooking up the fillings and he's putting it all on
a big hot plate and just frying it all up together and as those spices go on
there the smell is insane there's another guy
just out the front here freshly making the bread rolling it out to also
get right up on that hot plate they're just chucking more bread on there now
then there's another guy loading all those ingredients on as soon as they
come off the hot plate they're getting loaded onto the bread and they're super
hot in my hand it is a great buzzy little stall but it's starting to really
rain so we're gonna go up the road and find somewhere to eat these
these kati rolls look super good so we went with their classic chicken kati
roll and without it being eaten into there's not too much to look at it's
just a wrap bread but like I said it's really neat how they're making
everything fresh there at that tiny little stand what I'm gonna do get into
it and then I'll talk you through it oh this one looks really good I can
see some chicken and some onion right at the top
Oh mmm
really good flavor a little bit more subtle than I was expecting
come down here you can sort of see what's going on now so this bread this
paratha is beautiful and golden super crispy that was a little bit chewy
actually that bread and then inside we've got the the chicken you can see a
whole lot of onions I think there is some capsicum in there yea some
green capsicum just hiding down there below so the all those ingredients went
on that hot plate but the chicken's the beautiful colour when you see it go on
bright orange because wow it's very noisy here in India because
it's been there's another one because it's been spiced and the reason it's
called a kati roll is they cook that chicken that spiced chicken on a bamboo
stick which is called a kati so we saw him it had been precooked on the sticks
and then he was pulling it off to reheat it on the hot plate it's very nice it's
very subtle but I've got to say this dish when we booked these tickets to
India top of my list was the kati roll because we've had these before here
they're unreal this is a little bit more simple than I was expecting I was
expecting it to be more saucy it is a little bit dry I must say but there is
quite a bit of oil dripping out the bottom and sauce so maybe when we get
further down it's going to moisten up a bit but this first mouthful a little bit
dry
hmm okay that's better already the paratha down here you can actually
physically see it's much thinner so on the edge here where I had a whole lot
folded over it was just too bready so down here it's a bit more juicy so that
chicken and that chicken is very tasty with the spices a fraction overcooked
but not crazy bad and then the sweet onions very sweet capsicum all those
spices it's a really simple roll and an absolute classic here in Calcutta
ohhh it is very good it's definitely going to do us well for dinner