It feels like home to hear someone speak Bengali in Goa. Anumitra Ghosh Dastidar is at her ingredient-driven and cuisine-agnostic restaurant Edible Archives on Anjuna-Mapusa Road. It’s 11.45am on a Sunday, right before the kitchen opens, and she’s on a call with a supplier inquiring about Himsagar aam sotto from Malda, in Bengali. Like any good entrepreneur, she’s built a strong network over the last 15 years, travelling and working in places from the Far East to closer home, traversing Italy, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam and Sri Lanka, down to the rice-growing belt of India from Assam to Kerala. Archiving her diverse culinary experiences along the journey led to the creation of Edible Archives, which found a home in December 2019 at a century-old Goan-Portuguese villa with outdoor courtyard dining.
'At the Edible Archives restaurant, (which is housed in a 100-year-old Goan-Portuguese villa) we aim to create a collective sensory catalogue that belongs to all the people involved in growing, sourcing, preparing and eating a meal,' says Anumitra
A house ingrained with history
The beautiful Portuguese villa that houses Edible Archives is nestled amidst leafy bylanes and paddy fields. Anumitra picked this house for a reason. In the heart of the space that is now the restaurant courtyard, “pickles were preserved and masalas were stone-ground, water was drawn from the well, and stories, laughter and gossip exchanged through sunlit days and long into the night over feni and wine.” More importantly, rice used to be harvested from the paddy fields and brought here to be boiled and dried.
'Between our restaurants, we wish to have a system that tells people where and how its ingredients come from, down to the person who grew it'
Rice is ingrained in Anumitra’s culinary history. For Kochi Biennale 2018-19, her team researched and presented 42 varieties of indigenous rice, working with small batches from farmers who produced as little as 20kg, especially from the Northeast, Bengal, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa and Kerala.
Today, the menu at Edible Archives keeps evolving and changing with Anumitra’s ‘foodsteps’ around the world, but rice is perhaps the one constant. Other than the burger, every dish has rice including the signature Congee Bowls, which lie somewhere “between Taiwan street food and Bengali phena bhaat”. There are loyalists who send in their dabbas for bi-weekly orders of the delicious bowls of small-grain scented rice mixed with vegetables, egg, seafood or meat.
The menu at Edible Archives is inspired by Anumitra’s travels, but rice is perhaps the one constant. The signature dishes are the (left) congee bowls made with (right) a variety of local rice
When Anumitra worked closely with chef Ritu Dalmia (introduced to her by Chiki Sarkar) and Dalmia’s Italian chain of restaurants Diva, procurement was a key role. She learnt that there were many varieties of a single ingredient like rice or chillies. “There was a strong need inside me to showcase ingredients that were fast disappearing. Chefs abroad support their own culture and ingredients, whereas our whole focus is on imported goods. Somewhere, that hurt me and my sense of pride. That’s when the idea of Edible Archives started forming in my head,” shares the Bengali.
Life is a Bento box
In her latest venture, Bento Bento, which opens its doors on November 10 in Bangalore’s Indiranagar, Anumitra has packed Asian inspirations into the 30-seater restaurant. “I wanted to do something Asian because I travelled a lot in South Asia, worked in Bangkok and picked up a lot of things in Vietnam. We are trying to procure all the ingredients, except the soya sauce, from regional farmers,” she shares, sipping on a bottle of ‘Have a Good Day’, which looks somewhat like Limca.
‘What’s that?’ I ask. “Oh, you must try this. It’s a local brand, the factory is next door and we know the owner. Every few days, we get it fresh from the factory,” she says excitedly, calling for one.
‘I am more Calcutta than Bengali because I have lived away from Bengal for a long time’
It is this quality of drawing inspiration from people and produce around her that makes Anumitra’s process special. Her Sri Lankan delivery service, Yo Colombo, launched in Bangalore in October, was an idea that “just happened” while vacationing in a friend’s farmhouse.
“I was very tired, so I visited the farmhouse for two days just to relax. I noticed that there were few perennial crops and more seasonal produce like banana flower, stem and leaf, moringa flower, drumstick, lots of sweet coconut and curry leaves. I was there to work on my Asian plates, but instead I was thinking, ‘Why am I not doing Sri Lankan food?’ My friend and consultant, Priya Bala, is a Sri Lankan chef. I have travelled to Sri Lanka and done a few pop-ups. And I felt that people are ready for another kind of south Indian flavour. That’s how Yo Colombo happened,” she laughs.
She adds that Bento Bento has been getting “amazing reviews” including from Manu Chandra, who’s also working on his new space in the ’Luru after launching bespoke catering under Single Thread Caterers.
Three turning points in her culinary journey
The first was when Anumitra opened her very first restaurant, a Bengali-Japanese mash-up called Big Bongg Theory, in Shahpur Jat, Delhi. “I got to know a lot of interesting people. Shahpur Jat was the hub for all the good designers and I used to do their catering events,” she says. This was a few years after she worked in a small Japanese restaurant called Tamura in Delhi’s Green Park.
One of the turning points for Anumitra was when she opened her very first restaurant, a Bengali-Japanese mash-up called Big Bongg Theory, in Delhi
How she convinced the 65-year-old Japanese owner to work there is a story in itself. “I showed my face so consistently that one day the manager called me saying they didn’t have a dishwasher and if I’d like to come and help,” she says. It was the entry to the kitchen she was seeking and from chopping to butchery, she went from station to station like a bullet train. All this while balancing a Ph.D in Cognitive Linguistics from Delhi University!
The next turning point was Diva and working with “mentor” Ritu Dalmia. “It was never a boss-employee relationship. It was almost like she gave me an opportunity to be an artist and find my own expression.”
And finally, there was the Kochi Biennale 2018-19. “I think I was fortunate because there was a lot of curiosity around, and my orientation as an academic, entrepreneur and environmentally conscious person, all came together”.
'At the Edible Archives restaurant, we aim to create a collective sensory catalogue that belongs to all the people involved in growing, sourcing, preparing and eating a meal.'
Anumitra’s Kolkata connect
“Kolkata is associated largely with food memories, the scents and smells of the city as one walks through, and the nostalgia it evokes, of phuchkas, rolls and biryani,” grins Anumitra, who spent the first 21 years of her four decades on Ripon Street.
Every time she visits her hometown, the itinerary must include phuchka from “the guy who stands under Bijon Setu, or in front of Basanti Devi College”, rezala from Kidderpore’s India Restaurant (“it is richer than the rezala from Sabir’s Hotel”), Bengali food at home or by friends’ mothers (“I invite myself over”) and biryani from Zam Zam.
Her passion for food comes from her father, who was a connoisseur of food. “He was kind of like a patron to cooks who’d come from Bihar. There was a time when he would connect the dots and place these cooks under other masters out of sheer passion and goodwill. He knew all the biryani masters in Kolkata, and that’s how we’ve seen Zam Zam in its initial years,” shares the Holy Child Institute alumni.
The elusive taste of ilish is what brings her to Kolkata almost every monsoon. Though the last time she visited was for the reason dreaded by every non-resident — “bank work”!
Goa, home away from home
Anumitra met Shalini seven years ago and the couple built the beautiful feminine space that Edible Archives is; (right) With sister Anupriya who has now joined the Bangalore project
For now, Goa is home, with her partner of seven years, Shalini Krishnan.
Is it challenging to be a queer couple in the F&B space? “Shalini and I were already out when we met, so personally, all the challenges had been worked out. There might be challenges in the sense that… in any profession, there are boys’ clubs. We are not part of those, but I don’t know whether it’s a good or bad thing,” she smiles.
It is in people’s homes that she has had the best meals, including author Amitav Ghosh, when he had a house in the serene village of Aldona in north Goa. And when Derek O’ Brien was stationed in Goa, Anumitra became fast friends with his wife Tonuca.
‘My next menu for Edible Archives is going to be like the designers who come up with their ‘Fall’ collection. It will have ingredients from all over India and the menu will be like a moodboard where you tell the stories of these ingredients.’
She believes that the representation of Goan food cannot just be the Surmai (King Fish) or Chonak curry. “It is the small fish like dodiyare or mackerel that must be talked about. With every kilo of prawn or pomfret, around 7 kg of smaller fish is captured. If people only want to consume prawn, then we are creating an imbalance. In a place like Goa that has consumerist tourism, telling these stories becomes important,” shares Anumitra.
In her next Edible Archives menu, she plans to tell this story through “fried local fish with nothing but Goan salt”.
Any plans to open a restaurant in Kolkata? “I’m still writing that story,” she smiles, as I end mine.