For some, comfort food can be a plate of ‘khichdi’ with ‘ilish maach bhaja’. For some, it can be a bowl of steaming hot maggi, cheese toast or even a simple meal of plain rice with butter and mashed potatoes. And for some, comfort food can be a plate of piping hot paranthas with a dollop of curd and achar. If you fall in the last category, the latest food festival at Durbari, Swissôtel Kolkata Neotia Vista is for you. Till the 25th, Durbari is turning into a mini Paranthewali Gali where 17 different types of vegetarian and non-vegetarian paranthas will be on offer.
For the vegetarians, there are traditional options like tawa parantha, methi parantha, badshahi lachha parantha and warqi parantha. There are some innovative options too like hare gobhi paratha or paranthas with a broccoli filling, arbi ka parantha and soya paratha. Broccoli is not really my favorite vegetable and I was kinda apprehensive about how a broccoli parantha would taste but it was quite good. That ‘broccoli smell’ thankfully was missing and it had a very interesting flavor. I was bowled over by the soya parantha and if I did not know beforehand, it would have been tough to figure out that the filling was actually soya and not meat.
For the non-vegetarians, Paranthewali Gali festival is paradise! You get options like gosht keema parantha, chicken keema parantha, malai prawn paratha, chicken tikka and cheese paratha and the one and only mughlai parantha. Out of these, I tried the mughlai parantha, stuffed with mutton keema, coated with an egg and deep fried. The street version is too oily and you can hardly taste the filling but here, you get a generous portion of mutton keema at every bite and it is much lighter as well. I would also recommend that you try the chicken tikka and cheese parantha. Heavenly! The paranthas are available on all days for dinner and on Friday to Sunday for lunch as well. Pricing is around Rs 500 and each parantha is served with aloo subzi, yogurt and onion lachha.