For over six years, I've carried around a dislike for all Bengali food, except the desserts of course. The desserts are scrumptious. Who doesn't love a good, fresh, spongy Rasgulla? Even the tinned ones are delicious. The rest of it though, I thought I didn't like. This conclusion was based on surviving four days in Kolkata at a tech symposium while in college. The food was catered from some hotel, so the quality of ingredients was good; but I really don't like my main course sweet and dripping with khoya. If I do want something sweet, I'll have a Rasgulla or some Sandesh, thank you very much.
This led to me walking around for six years making statements like "I don't like Bengali food, it's all too sweet; there's no other taste to it" and "There are no decent vegetarian options in Bengali cuisine except for the sweets". Of course, living on steamed rice and lentils with Rasgullas for dessert at every single meal for four days does have that effect.
Then I went to the interior of Bengal this month. There were no fancy restaurants, no disgustingly rich preparations dripping with sweetness. And guess what? There are wonderful vegetarian dishes that I really enjoyed, and one that I loved, too. There was real Bengali food at a small eatery in "canteen" style. The waiter recommended a thali for my lunch, which was a platter of rice accompanied by dal (lentils), two kinds of vegetables, chutney and a roast papad. It was delicious, I loved everything on that plate. The chutney was sweet and salty and tangy all at once, a real burst of flavour in the mouth. There was a green leafy vegetable and potato curry and another with some root vegetable. The green curry was simple and light, and the other was heavier and spicier. The flavours were robust to go with the blandness of the rice, which is the staple carbohydrate source in West Bengal. The whole meal would of course be accompanied by fish in some form or the other, in case of a typical Bengali meal. It was simple, tasty, hearty fare; and get this -- not sweet.
I had some other lovely meals too, in those few days. Though I don't really prefer deep fried things for breakfast, I relished every morsel of luchis and ghugni (a dish made of dried yellow peas) that one time.
I'd been misled by restaurants trying to impress guests with the richness of their food, and had forgotten one of the cardinal rules of food. The real cuisine of any region can't be experienced in big city restaurants. They are found in the nondescript eateries which serve the locals their everyday meals. Also, one experience shouldn't decide an opinion about an entire cuisine or region. I thought four days were enough to get an idea of a cuisine, they weren't; at least not the way I spent them holed away in a convention hall for most of the time.
If you want to know a cuisine, explore. Go to big fancy restaurants, and roadside stalls. Go to swanky neighbourhoods and little side-streets. Go to every kind of place that serves this cuisine, talk to the owners, the waiters, and the patrons; and then a complete picture starts to emerge. Or you could just stick to Rasgullas, that worked fine for six years for me, but then you'd be missing out on great stuff like Aloo Posto (potatoes in a poppy seed gravy), and that tangy chutney.
(Oh, now I'm really hungry; and it's just an hour past breakfast time. That's what writing about food does to me I suppose.)
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