Chinese Flavours

BREAKFAST WITH A DIFFERENCE

Tiretti Bazaar is one of the few remaining places in Kolkata where you can sample authentic Chinese snacks like steamed pork buns, dimsum and light, subtly sweet, sesame sprinkled deep-fried batter balls. For decades, this was where Kolkataʼs large Chinese community lived and worked. Even though, from the 1960s, the old quarters were gradually razed to make way for office blocks and broader roads, for a few hours at dawn, the site reclaims its old identity as a traditional open-air market.

Sunday is the busiest day and vendors sell a wide variety of homemade products: soy and chilli sauces, tofu and pickles, roast pork and Chinese sausages, glass noodles and prawn wafers.

Soup with pork and fish balls is also a huge attraction. Women manage the huge simmering pot of broth on a sidewalk stove, ladling out the soup into plastic bowls and dropping in pork and fish balls. 

The breakfast stays true to its name and begins as early as 5.30 am, and is all but finished by 8 am. The variety of pork dishes available here is somewhat uncommon, sincenot too many localities in the city will sell pork. Both steamed and fried pork momos are served with the signature fiery hot sauce.

The Chinese Breakfast is, however, just a part of the bustling farmerʼs market that is Tiretta Bazaar. Long strings of fresh sausages and buckets full of crabs jostle for space with poultry, meat and fish. Everything from prawn chips to rice noodles to shiitake mushrooms are hidden away herein the lanes of Chinatown.  If anything is worth leaving the comfort of your blanket on a chilly morning for, it is a date with dumplings!