Return of the prodigal: #blahvsfood goes to Yokocho, Kolkata
Auroni Mookerjee is the greatest Bengali chef in the world. The man who changed how the world saw and understood Bengali food… its restaurants, its cuisine, its produce, its place in the world. So of course, when he decided to go back to Kolkata and open his own restaurant (in partnership with Abhimanyu Maheshwari), he didn’t do Bengali food! Instead, he opened an Eastern (as in East Asian, not East Indian) street food restaurant inspired by Japanese izakayas and urban khao gallis! Yokocho is a triumph. It is a completely original take on eastern food, one that celebrates Tokyo alleyways and Singapore hawker centres while not being imitative in any way. This isn’t an “Asian” restaurant the way we know it. It is eastern food through Auroni’s lens, with big swathes of his love of Kolkata thrown in, along with a lifetime of memories. Banchan from the bajaar Calcutta temaki tacos Soup dumplings Childhood memories of Gung Palace in Delhi see you start with banchan, but this is a ...
