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The legendary Trincas turns 100 next year, and it's getting a head start. From October 15 to 20, across Durga Puja week, its listening room Tavern-Behind-Trincas on Park Street is running a six-day music programme. Their in-house Bengali band Tavern-er-Taal will play twice a day, working through three generations of Bengali music.
It starts with the classics of Hemanta Mukhopadhyay and Manna Dey and moves to Lata Mangeshkar. Then it'll land up in the more recent sound of Mohiner Ghoraguli, Cactus and Fossils. Everyone's dad has a Hemanta Mukhopadhyay song they'll defend to the death. Everyone's cousin has a Mohiner Ghoraguli one. Now they can fight in the same room, with food.
Pujo also brings a light joke to Trincas’ menu, one that every Bengali will be bemused by. Daak Naam vs Tyash Naam plays with the difference between what Bengalis actually call a dish and what a menu might call it. Tok jhal mishti murgi becomes sweet & spicy tamarind chicken. Lebu lonka maach becomes kaffir lime & chilli fish. I’m reminded of Sukumar Ray’s poem Tyash Goru, where he wrote about a cow that is really a bird who only eats a soup of soap and candles. Which, in turn, is really an over-Westernised Bengali.
When is Durga Puja?
Mahalaya falls on October 10. The main five days run from Shashthi on October 17 to Bijoya Dashami on October 21, with Ashtami on the 19th. The Tavern-er-Taal sets will run alongside Trincas' regular four-band-a-day programming, so the music doesn't stop. Seating does: there are only 40 covers.
More about Trincas
Trincas opened in 1927 as a Swiss tea room on Park Street. In the late 1950s, it was bought by two friends, a Punjabi and a Baghdadi Jew from Burma, who had met, penniless, in 1943 on the streets of erstwhile Calcutta.
They turned it into a restaurant and nightclub just as Park Street was becoming one of Asia's best known entertainment strips. It has been feeding the city with continental and Bengali Chinese food – and chelo kebabs – ever since, soundtracking its evenings with some of the city’s most coveted live music. You simply can't miss the chicken a ka Kiev if you go. (A friend from Uttar Pradesh swore he'd retire in Kolkata after trying it.) Other hits include the fish Irani chelo kebab sizzler, lobster thermidor, their bekti dishes, and shepherd's pie.
These days, the establishment also runs the Trincas Timeline Project, a digital archive of patrons' memories, with a book in the works. Tavern-Behind-Trincas is the newest chapter of a very long story.
The details
When: October 15-20
Where: Trincas, Park Street, Kolkata
Price: ₹2,500 for two without alcohol