- Address: P 241, Lake Road, Kolkata - 700029 (Southern Avenue/Sarat Bose Road - the Lake CCD lane).
- Pricing: Budget
- Capacity: 12 seater
- What we ordered and how it fared:
1. Mixed Seafood Soup: It was a thick, light yet flavourful broth with bits of prawn, octopus, squid and crab floating about. Spiked with a dash of pepper from the table, every spoon was a mouthful of sea - packing in a nice balance of bite and slurp. There was a barely detectable undercurrent of celery-onion-carrot - the holy trinity of all good stocks, and the single portion was quite enough as a beginning for the 3 of us.
2. Squid Fry: Perfectly done squid rings doused in a tangy, spicy, peppery onion-ginger-garlic-green chilli masala. There was a hint of soy too, if I'm not mistaken. The condiments were ordinary, the dish was not! Very nice!
3. Stir-fried Tiger Prawns: The menu promised us a "sweet and sour black pepper sauce" preparation, but it turned out to be quite a below-average dish of regular capsicum-onion-garlic enhanced medium-sized prawns coated with the standard Sino-Indian red sauce, if you know what I mean. Also, the prawns had a bitter metallic taste to them, which I couldn't quite place. Overdose of MSG perhaps? Anyway, this dish was disappointing, to be frank; the only low point of the meal.
4. Pan-fried Octopus: Super yummy tender chunks of octopus in a mildly spiced butter-garlic sauce; every mouthful was an explosion of flavours- slightly sweet, slightly sour with the creaminess of butter shining beautifully through the fiery heat of the garlic. My mouth is literally salivating even now at the memory!
5. Pomfret Koshimbir: Nice, fresh pieces of one whole pomfret (my favorite fish next to Hilsa and Pabda) that were supposed to come prepared in a "coconut and green masala". We got the coconut alright, but in place of the coriander-mint-green chilli base there was a basic brown gravy made slightly tangy with tamarind, not kokum. Though it wasn't quite what we were expecting, it actually was nice on its own.
6. Mixed seafood noodles: Garlic and bitter-greens spiked noodles handsomely studded with generous chunks of crunchy shrimp, juicy octopus, tender scallops and large rings of squid. It was the perfect accompaniment to the Panfried Octopus and we loved it!
7. Seafood Rice: (Couldn't photograph in our hurry to eat!) Same combination of saline meats as the noodles in a ginger-garlic fried rice, but it was marred for me by the whiff of MSG that I noticed. Very slight, but it was there. But it made for a nice base to smother with the pomfret gravy, and my husband and son liked it, so well, all is fine!
We washed everything down with some Thums Up and were very satisfied (and full) with the meal. For such a tingu teeny-tiny place, it packs quite a punch with both the menu and the pricing for the kind of items it serves. Portions are nice and filling, though not overtly generous- each dish is quite sufficient to be divided among two people- we were two and a half (!) and everything sufficed. Service is warm, quick, friendly and personalised, as the owners themselves cook and supervise the proceedings. We ate quite a lot of stuff, as you can see above, but the bill came to INR 960/- only, which literally floored my husband and the flabbergasted look on his face was worth capturing! So you can easily have a quick, light meal there for under 500 rupees, which I think is really wonderful for the amount, quality and kind of dishes you get. We are definitely going back for more!
Lazybirdie Rating: 3.95/5
KISS: Keep it short and sweet! A series on this blog that is perfectly in sync with me and my Lazybirdie persona. Hopefully it'll also be helpful for those of you who, like me, are almost always in a rush and don't really have the time/energy/inclination for long-winded ramblings of detailed reviews. KISS impressions will be handy in letting you decide in a jiffy whether a product/restaurant is well-worth a second look and/or purchase/visit or not! :)
