Everywhere you go to eat, you are asked for your choice of water, bottled water (mineral water here), or tap filtered water. I have always gone for the bottling option, as I found the taste to my choice & more hygienic.

Street side unhygienic tasty food places
Everywhere you go in Calcutta you find road side vendors selling various tasty foods, during my college days I used to frequent places like this, and it was really fun. They serve things like chops (friend potato patties), chola-batura (spicy garbanzo + fried fluffy bread), and phuchka (a hollow round crunchy tasty shell filled with tamarind water and spicy cooked veggies).

Now-a-days after our immunity levels have dropped (US stay), we are very cautious, even though everything looks mouth watering. Anyway around our apartment area we decided to get home-delivery of some of the tasty chops. We did not want to go there ourselves as the ambience might be far from appetizing. Our logic was that if the fritters (chops of egg/onion/potatoes) were freshly fried in hot oil then the bacteria would be absent. We found the prices super cheap and the food super tasty, though the oil was not olive based but definitely a one time or once a month experience.

“Bhaja Hari Manna" Bengali Restaurants
Manna Dey is a popular Bengali singer from our childhood days, he still has a wide following. He is now more or less retired and lives in Bangalore, though he still maintains a Calcutta address. He once sang a song about travelling all over the world and eating the various international delicacies. Based on that theme this restaurant chain tries to serve Bengali and fusion cuisines.

We ordered dals, fish curry and rice and it was all great, extremely tasty and very reasonably priced. The restaurant also has a huge music CD collection you can buy from. So far this has been our best choice overall. One satisfying feeling was to watch our next table Calcutta-Chinese customers stuff themselves with the fish curries (reciprocating our visits to the San Mateo Sichuan Chinese restaurant).

The people in Calcutta who work in the service industry if asked to apply for similar jobs in the US will all get a failing grade. Most are grim, serious faced and seem generally unhappy with their jobs. Most of the patrons seems to ignore or are in general apathetic to this attitude and go about their daily life.

I still have a few more days. The opposition political party in West Bengal has asked for a full city wide stoppage of work, now if this works out Calcuttans will get Tue/Wed to procrastinate. So we are now finishing the tail-end of our shopping and trying to get the stuff packed for my Friday Morning flight back. Sangita will stay back for the next few months.