This is a part of YUMMRAJ’s series called TIMELESS KOLKATA EATOUTS – reviews of Heritage Kolkata restaurants. Each restaurant has been rated as ‘Old is Gold’ or ‘Old is no more Gold’ based on the experience.

Year/decade of opening- Early 1900s. My father used to go with his friends when in high school.It was a big thing then.

In a nutshell:

Legendary 60+ year old Kolkata restaurant that still has a lot of brand recall but has compromised with quality to keep prices low. Good & fast service, no ambience but average food.

YUMMRAJ says for Anadi Cabin – ‘OLD IS NO MORE GOLD’.

Address & other details: Anadi Cabin

Facebook page: Anadi Cabin

Meal for 2: Rs. 150 onwards

Cuisine type : Vegetarian & Nonvegetarian

Disclaimer: All restaurants / eateries reviewed by YUMMRAJ were visited by YUMMRAJ himself & he has paid for the full Bill & tips also. http://www.yummraj.com does not have even one featured / sponsored reviews. YUMMRAJ believes in going to a restaurant in anonymity, as a normal guest, experience everything & give a honest account of the same to you.

I rate all the food items & then give a final overall rating which is a simple average of the individual item ratings. What the ratings stand for: 5 = Excellent, 4 = Very Good, 3 = Good, 2 = Fair, 1 = Disaster.

Short Description – in case u r in a hurry:

This restaurant is situated in centrally located & one of the busiest places in Kolkata – Esplanade. It is housed in a small building & not in one of those Grand, mammoth, beautiful Colonial Buildings.

The restaurant has a frying & finishing kitchen straight in the façade. Inside the restaurant is a small Dining Hall with 5-6 marble top wooden tables with 4 chairs each. Customers r expected to share table with other expected customers & hence in peak hours all chairs are full.

They have quite a few number of servers & hence service is very fast & efficient. When I last went here as a kid with my father, I remember some of the servers still were wearing Dhoti & Kurta. This time around I found all of them in shirt & trousers.

There is no menu card. A menu list is painted & put up outside the restaurant. The server usually rattles off the list of items available.

Food was average to good but had absolutely no brilliance. Many of the later opened shops like Bengal Hotel, apanjan etc & even much older restaurants like Mitra Café serve way better food.

Detailed Description – In case u have the Time to NJOY reading:

We ordered Moglai Parota. This is egg & meat keema inside a thin maida parota. The moglai parota was fried using a lot of oil in very high heat. So the whole surface was almost like deep fried & some of the parts were over fried / browned.

The moglai parota was good in terms of seasoning. It was soft, good to taste but had just too much oil dripping from all over.

As we were about to finish off the parota, we realized that there was choice of Moglai parota with duck egg. We shud hv ordered the duck egg one but did not know – bad luck. The server did not ask us for that option.

This was accompanied by an un-peeled aloo subzi similar to the ones served with kochuri. This was nice to taste. Not spicy, not hot but balanced.

Rate the moglai parota 3/5

Post this we had chicken cutlet – This had good tasty chicken inside & crispy but fat bread crumb layer outside. The outer layer was so fat that the taste of the chicken was getting overshadowed at times. Rate it 2.5/5

We then moved on to Fish kobiraji. For the uninitiated, a kobiraji is a patty dipped into raw beaten egg & fried – that forms a bushy cover on the outside. ‘Kobiraji’ is a bengalized version of the English word ‘coverage’ that refers to’ covering’ the patty with egg.

The kobiraji once again suffered from an over thick outer layer. The fish inside was flaky & nice. Overall the cover was overtaking the taste of the fish. Rate this dish 2.5/5 again.

Once again we did it – waiter gave us hand wash at this stage, b4 we finished our intended meal. He already thought we had over eaten.

We next ordered Mutton kosha. It was basically a mutton curry with chewy but soft & small pieces of mutton. The curry was good in general but not what a true blue mutton kosha is. It lacked the intensity & punch of a kosha. It was a good mutton curry on its own. Rate it 3/5.

We had this with Parota. Almost deep fried, dripping with oil, soft & tasty non laccha paratha. Rate it 2.5/5

We paid a total of Rs 280 & we were given no receipt. So unable to post the same.

Overall rating of food at anadi cabin averages out to 2.7/5.

I am very unlikely to revisit. Look forward to hearing ur experience at Anadi Cabin.