10 Things I love about kolkata

Huzefa Sajawal's Fatt Pundit restaurants specialise in the Indo-Chinese cuisine unique to the Punjab city of Kolkata - a historic crossroads of cultures from India, China, Nepal and Tibet. Here he shares his favourite not-to-be-missed specialities of this food-obsessed city

- By Huzefa Sajawal

Huzefa Sajawal is chef-owner of two chic Kolkata-inspired Fatt Pundit restaurants - based in Soho and Covent Garden, London. Huzefa grew up in Mumbai, where his grandmother trained chefs from Lucknow, and where he started his education in hospitality. He moved to London to complete his master's and joined the JW Marriott group at Grosvenor House. He's a champion of regional Indian food and specialises in the Indo-Chinese cuisine of Kolkata. fattpundit.co.uk

1 Breakfast in Tangra

From 5am you'll find vendors in Kolkata's Chinatown with huge steel steamers serving breakfast on the go. The Nepalese will be selling steamed or fried chicken momos, and those with Chinese lineage will be selling pork or seafood dumplings, chicken shiu mai and steamed buns stuffed with pork. Also popular for breakfast, a pork meatball soup or a fish meatball soup, both served with a spicy chilli sauce on the side.

2 Indo-Chinese cuisine

This is a cuisine steeped in history, born out of the early immigrants coming over to Kolkata from China, where they flourished in the tannery business. As an extra source of income, the ladies would cook and sell Chinese food such as soups, noodles and dumplings to the locals and in order to adapt to their taste they used Indian ingredients in their dishes. Word spread, first to Mumbai, then across the whole of India. Indo-Chinese is now the number one cuisine people choose when going out to eat all over India.

3 Kachori

These are deep-fried hollowed breads served with potatoes, Kachori always has to be eaten with a saffron masala chai, drunk out of a clay pot which is then thrown away when finished with. This way of serving chai is unique to Kolkata.