Much of the ‘joy’ in Kolkata’s ‘City of Joy’ can be attributed to the city’s love for food. Heated debates over the best chicken roll or mutton biryani, or mishti doi feature in the lives of every Kolkata resident. Food vloggers have taken these debates online now, showing us just how much there is to the city’s culinary landscape. My Kolkata caught up with Foodka and Henglabazz who are charting these waters very differently.
Chuckle and Chew with Foodka
Mir Afsar Ali (left) and Indrajit Lahiri (right) along with teammate Sunando Banerjee aim to tell the stories behind food, instead of just rating them. Indrajit Lahiri
Popular RJ, actor and funnyman, Mir Afsar Ali conceptualised a show that would do more than rate food or hand out recipes. Mir brought Indrajit Lahiri and Sunando Banerjee on board as partners, to create a platform that would focus on telling stories behind the food. “I used to write a food blog called Mohamushkil, besides running an IT company. Sunando was at the helm of Anonymous Digital. We met Mir around 2014, and started Foodka with the motive of treating every food as a story that needs to be told. It was unique, as the city hadn’t seen something like this – two middle-aged men talking about food, shot with a proper camera setup and sound design,” said Lahiri. According to their YouTube channel, Foodka is a story of a foodie uncle and his hungry nephew. Foodka is an authority on food who takes his nephew on a gastronomic journey.”
While Lahiri decides the storyline and what to shoot, along with additional research and development, Mir is the creative brain of the operation and ideates the presentation of the story. Banerjee and his team handle the production, post-production and digital marketing.
Over the years, Foodka has managed to give foodies a deeper insight into Kolkata food, than simply a discussion on flavour palates. The organisation collaborated with Incredible India to document the transition of Calcutta to Kolkata through food. Lahiri recounted this as his favourite campaign, with the opportunity to explore food items that go back centuries. Foodka also features prominently, the many communities of people who have enriched Bengal’s culture.
Since the pandemic hit us, Lahiri has noted certain changes in Kolkata’s food trends, most notably a rise in home chefs and food delivery. “There’s been a boom in cloud kitchens and home kitchens, with food being sent across the city. It is something I have never witnessed in my life. The pandemic has also led to a renewed concentration on hygiene, which is great. Also, almost all restaurants are coming up with exciting offers and combos for home delivery. Even the five-star hotels, which has never happened before,” he explained.
Although they have more than 3,00,000 subscribers on YouTube, Lahiri emphasises that making money from the platform is not their objective. “Conversations about cosmopolitan food are generally dominated by Mumbai. Apart from rosogolla, people rarely mention Bengal. Our vision is to showcase Bengal, and Eastern India by extension, as a major culinary travel destination,” he added.
Given their success, this vision has already started to take shape. “A Bengali lady from the Netherlands who hadn’t been back home in over two decades told us that Foodka’s videos helped her get a feel of her hometown. A group from Los Angeles that came to Kolkata also got in touch with us. Despite our videos being in Bengali, the English subtitles were of help, as they took down a list of names from our videos, went to those places, and ordered their food by showing them screenshots. Foodka has also broken the age barrier, and our audience ranges from 13-year-old kids to 70-year-olds,” said Lahiri.
Cheekily enough, when asked about his favourite dish, Lahiri throws a curveball. “I actually prefer the Dindigul and Hyderabadi versions of the biryani over its Kolkata variant as I like very spicy food, and subtlety isn’t really my taste,” he chuckled, while adding that he enjoyed controversy.
Exploring the exotic with Henglabazz
With Henglabazz, Arpan Goswami's motive is to bring quality street food options into the limelight.
Arpan Goswami left his orthopedic business to run a food vlog in 2019, and hasn’t looked back since then. “I love both eating and vlogging. I used to watch Mark Weins’ vlogs a lot, and felt that I could do something like this myself,” he said. Henglabazz currently has over 80,000 subscribers.
Henglabazz’s appeal lies in how it focuses not on expensive restaurants with plush interiors, but economic street food items that are accessible to the everyman. “When I started out, restaurants would shoo me away as they either didn’t get the concept of vlogging, or would find my 200-subscriber number laughable. This prompted me to focus on not only providing people with affordable options, but also helping hidden eateries find a clientele,” Goswami said.
Accompanied by his friend, Piyush Saha, who has been behind Henglabazz’s lens since the start, Goswami has devoted himself completely to creating the content for the videos. His mornings begin with him setting out early to shoot and eat. He comes back home and promptly begins editing the footage. The edit is done by night, and scheduled to be uploaded to YouTube by the next afternoon. This is part of Goswami’s desire to upload a vlog every single day, a promise that he has meant to keep throughout most of the pandemic too.
“Although there are some days when I upload a vlog after a day’s gap, this pandemic has provided me with ample room to discover new food trends in the city. Street food has become incredibly cheap since the lockdown. I discovered a kid from Ranaghat who comes to Kolkata on a cycle to sell mishti just for Rs 5. Another stall opposite SSKM hospital sells unlimited ghugni for Rs 10. All over Bengal, such eateries have cropped up, and my passion is to place the camera towards those who aren't covered by anyone,” he said.
Goswami cites their positive comments as his main motivation to keep vlogging. “Almost 25 per cent of my subscribers are from Bangladesh. It has often happened that people from there have come to Kolkata, eaten at spots I have recommended, and even met me in person,” he smiled.