At this Kolkata lunchroom, taste forgotten rice, rare fish and lost flavours

At Amar Khamar in Kolkata, a lunchroom rooted in Bengal’s landscape and literature works with women farmers, Sundarbans’ communities and beekeepers to revive rare rice, heirloom ingredients and disappearing food traditions

At Amar Khamar lunchroom, the kolapata (green banana leaf) is glossed with steam from nearly forgotten rice varieties such as daadkhani and harinakhuri.

What follows is a procession of dishes: mutton slow cooked with chui jhal (piper chilli), fritters of kulekhara (marsh barbel) leaves, a chochchori (a mash) of carp entrails and peas. Each grain, fish, and leaf carries the soil it comes from — birthed, foraged, found, and sometimes rediscovered after years of silent disappearance. Diners halt conversations mid-sentence and prompt startled recognition: “Isn’t Daadkhani from Jogindranath Sarkar’s children’s poems? We never knew it was an actual rice variety.”

This is a map of Bengal served on a plate. 

Khichuri tasting platter | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Amar Khamar’s ingredient-led table traces the geography of Bengal’s floodplains, forests, ponds, and paddy fields – a land whose fertility has produced countless varieties of rice, lentils, greens, and fish, surviving mostly in old poems, stories, and oral recall. Founded by Sarah Gekeler and Sujoy Chatterjee, the Amar Khamar Lunchroom treats sourcing as an act of reverence for the soil, the farmer, and the slow labour that precedes the meal.

Women working in the fields | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement