In a nutshell:
A pop up stall in Kolkata of an 80 year old sweet shop in krishnanagar that serves very different and nice Bengali sweets – worth a try
Address & other details: adhar Chandra Das
Meal for 2: ₹30 onwards
Cuisine type : vegetarian
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We paid ₹150 for all this food. No bill.
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
We were driving back to the Kolkata airport and had some time in hand. We saw mishti hub on the way, First seen in a video by foodka.
We decided not to eat any more sweets as we had too much sweets in the 3 day trip. So we decided to skip mishti hub this time and rather spend the extra time at Biswa Bangla haat. As we entered, we spotted a food court and there was this shop from krishnanagar who had set up a stall.
The rest is history – ‘no more sweet’ resolution went to the dustbin. 15 minutes later we were 8 sweets down!!!
While this was the first time for me, my partner had eaten sweets from the original krishnanagar store b4 and she only suggested that we eat at the stall.
The original store has been around since 1307 bangabdo (Bengali calendar – this lunar calendar was started during Akbar’s time, for revenue collection).
The man in the counter was very warm and friendly. He kept on telling us in detail about the sweets and also other stories. We enjoyed this chat also, in addition to the sweets.
Though there was a sweet display counter, not all sweets were displayed. Most part of the counter was empty. The guy kept taking out a box of new sweet from somewhere, every time we finished one.
They send shawr puria and shawr pora by courier to different parts of india. The banner in the shop mentioned ‘world renowned’ in Bengali though !!!!
Loved the experience.
Detailed description- in case u hv the time to njoy reading:
The shop is famous for shawr bhaja and shawr pora. In Bengali language, shawr is the fat layer that comes up on top of the vessel after boiling milk – it’s called malai in Hindi. Pora means ‘burnt’ (here it means dehydrated), bhaja means fried.
Shawr pora was hand shaped and hence uneven. Very rarely one sees such sweets in Kolkata or anywhere – most people use dice. It was unidirectionally sweet, but not too sweet. Flavours of reduced milk was present. It was neither daanedaar nor juicy like milk cake. It was dry. It was good to taste. Rate it 3.5/5
Shawr bhaja was quite different – it had a superb crisp top layer and slightly juicy and layered body. The top layer had a slight burnt feel to it. It was sweet , not too sweet and it
had a feeble hint of salt that made the magic. Rate it 4.5/5
Tawk mishti doi was yoghurt that had a twin taste of sweet and sour. Tawk means sour and mishti means sweet. This doi was light and was less thicker than the usual mishti doi in Kolkata. The good thing about this doi is that it had a lovely balance of sweet and sour and zero fat layer on top. Very close to mishti doi made at home. Excellent. Rate it 4.5/5
Kheer kodom was a ‘ras’ dipped sweet made from chhena (curdled milk – similar to cottage cheese/ paneer) in the middle and a Sandesh kind of outer cover (over simplified description, not accurate). The unique and very interesting part of this sweet was a flavour / essence that they had put. The outer layer had crisp sev made of reduced milk that gave a twist to the texture. Very good to taste, a bit over sweet for the palate for some , lovely flavor and good play of textures. Rate the dish 4.5/5
Nikhuti was a white, hand made, uneven sweet made from chhana (cottage cheese) and khoya. It was low on sweet and was essentially like a laddoo made from small white pieces of the mixture described above. Loved it. Rate it 3.5/5
Chhanabora Was similar to kalo jaam (kala jamun) sweet sold in Bengal. It had a thick, burnt to black outer layer that had a tinge of bitter feel to it. The density of the chhana ball was high – hence there was not too much ras that cud enter, thus moderating the sweetness of the sweet. Liked it quite a bit. The sweet was deep fried in oil and not in ghee. Rate it 3.75/5
Overall rating averages out to 4/5
Wud travel to krishnanagar once to eat at the main shop once.