Delight in Calcutta

Calcutta Notebook turns out to be more than just a fetching name for a restaurant. Udit Sarkhel, once head chef at Bombay Brasserie, collected the recipes of his Bengali mother and grandmother and decided to open a little restaurant dedicated to the cuisine, next door to his eponymous Sarkhel's. The small, trim dining-room is decorated with Bengali artworks.

Eating out in Calcutta is a glorious adventure, not least just watching food being prepared by people living on the streets, and you can get a definite taste of it here in Southfields.

Typical of Calcutta "fast food" is phuchka, crisp hollow puris filled with chick peas, sprouted mung beans and green mango. Add tamarind water to taste and cram the whole thing in your mouth. Ghugni, curried peas with date chutney and roasted cumin, is also good.

Chicken Kobiraji, described as a Mog speciality from the foothills of Assam, is chicken pieces dressed in frills of egg batter served with red onion chutney. We didn't try them, but breadcrumbed fillets of Tilapia fish are cooked according to a recipe from Firpo's, a restaurant I remember my mother mistily reminiscing about. Those were the days when my sister was taken to curtsey to the statue of Queen Victoria outside the Victoria Memorial.

In the main course we tried lau chingri, crunchily fresh prawns cooked with bottle gourd in a buttery sauce, murgi aar bansher korol, a hot chicken and bamboo shoot curry from Cooch-Behar and panthar jhol, kid curry cooked on the bone with rather too much tomato in the sauce.

Whatever you choose, accompany it with cholar dal made with split Bengal gram and luchi, puffed Bengali bread, to scoop it up with. There are some interesting vegetable assemblies including one of peas, potato and cauliflower where the cauliflower retains its crispness.

No Bengali would deem a meal complete without something sweet. Options here include date-and-rice pudding and a pancake filled with sweetened fresh coconut and liquid jaggery. Or there is kulfi (condensed milk ice-cream) if neither of those appeals.

The better-than-usual wine list is moderately priced, but more authentic would be coconut water, lassi, lime soda or sherbets. We went inauthentic with a very nice bottle of Morgon. Service was sweet and efficient.

Calcutta Notebook
201 Replingham Road, Southfields, London, SW18 5LY