The Well-Fed Bong

The end of summer is traditionally Hilsa feasting time in Bengal, but things are much more muddled in Mumbai. In any case, O Calcutta announced the Hilsa Festival in August, and we promptly started salivating. There’s nothing like a bit of independence to inspire the Bengali bhadralok to a feast, so we headed into Tardeo’s innards on the very next day – Sunday, August 16 2009. This OnlyFish-turned-OCalcutta tucked away in a shady-sounding Hotel Rosewood in the bylanes of Tardeo is my favourite in the now humungous chain that Anjan Chatterjee has built, but it turned out to be firmly in the middle of a renovation. The restaurant was still open, though now it was tucked away in what must have been a conference room at the same shadily named hotel. There were, however, plenty of displays announcing that the hilsa we were after was definitely on the menu. Basically, the festival was six different preparations of hilsa; what the Frenchophiles among us call entrees. Of course fried hils...