Chef Brinda Bose On Bringing East Bengal’s Authentic Flavours To Mumbai

India’s food scene is decisively shifting towards hyper-local flavours. Swiggy’s 2025 annual report, ‘How India Eats’ (in collaboration with Kearney), reveals that Indians, who are motivated to explore native and lesser-known cuisine, are embracing regional flavours at the table. ​

This growing interest focuses on distinct cooking techniques, household food traditions, and the unique memories associated with daily home-cooked meals—elements rarely found in typical restaurant settings. ​

​Against this backdrop of evolving food preferences, Chef Brinda Bose’s talent lies between nostalgia and discovery. Building on the nationwide trend toward regional authenticity, Bose runs Feast Bengal, a project that introduces diners to the layered histories of traditional Bengali food. She presents the cuisine as a living inheritance shaped by Partition, joint-family kitchens, and evolving food rules. For the audience and diners, Bose’s hands-on approach provides a more comprehensive experience of Bengali cuisine than the typical restaurant-based perspective.

Her 19-year stint as a teacher also influences the way she approaches cooking. The connection between her profession and food is clear: food as living history, recipes as an inheritance, and the kitchen as a classroom that teaches culture through aroma, texture, and flavour. “The recipes I nurture and curate are a part of my family’s history and shape its living legacy,” Chef Bose said.

​What encouraged her to start Feast Bengal was her disagreement with the way Bengali food was recognised only through a few established restaurants. She claimed that while increased travel, friendships, and food delivery platforms like Swiggy and Zomato have broadened exposure to diverse cuisines, including Bengali, but they are not being represented with authenticity. Bose wants to contributes in bringing her city’s true flavours to the diners in Mumbai

Bringing An Authentic Slice Of Bengal To Mumbai​

Bose begins by locating herself carefully within Bengal’s historical geography. “My roots lie in East Bengal (now Bangladesh), and my grandparents moved to West Bengal after Bengal’s partition in 1905,” she said. Her origins are reflected in her cooking and recipes as well. “The Bengal many people know (often filtered through restaurant menus in Kolkata) isn’t the only Bengal that exists,” she added.

Bose explains that the ingredients used in East Bengali home kitchens differ from those found in standard Bengali food served in Kolkata’s eateries. East Bengali flavours are richer in onion and garlic, mustard oil, and often feature fish or mutton. Meanwhile, West Bengal’s cuisine often features more sweetness, poshto (poppy seeds), radhuni (wild celery), and chenna (cottage cheese) in its dishes, reflecting Hindu roots. “Even small changes in spice levels or ratios can entirely change a dish’s flavour,” the chef said. This indicates that regional food has many family versions, each with its own unique flavour and distinct characteristics.

When discussing main ingredients and techniques in Bengali food, Bose highlights seasoning. Panch Phoron—a traditional five-spice blend from Eastern India features prominently in her kitchen. It includes saunf (fennel), methi (fenugreek), radhuni (wild celery), kalonji (nigella), and jeera (cumin).

Alongside panch phoron, she cites posto (poppy seeds) as another essential marker of West Bengal’s flavours. Combinations such as curd, garlic, nigella, cumin, and celery seeds also stand out. These details are not ornamental but lie at the heart and form the grammar of Bose’s preparations. 

Busting Myths About Home-Cooked Bengali Food

Along with introducing diners to the flavours of home-cooked Bengali food, Bose aims to counter the misconception that Bengali cuisine is predominantly non-vegetarian. A proper meal, she says, is a structured progression that introduces flavours, meats, and vegetables one at a time. “Whenever you visit a Bengali household, you will be welcomed by 4-5 vegetarian dishes, acting as palate cleaners, before any non-vegetarian preparations are served to you,” she notes.

Her description of the meal’s arc places vegetarian cooking at the centre rather than the margins. The vegetables move from tito (bitter preparations like karela or neem-based dishes) towards richer flavours.

The meal usually ends with chutney—sweet and sour—served to signal completion. Bose doesn’t just defend Bengali vegetarian food; she reveals an eating style that remains unfamiliar to many.

​Bose distinguishes between everyday vegetarian food and the stricter, devotional form, known as niramish. “When preparing prasad or bhog, it becomes a complete mono,” Bose said. Onion and garlic (“kanda lasoon”) are avoided; ginger and asafoetida (hing) are used instead. This is not rigid, but rather follows ritual logic. 

The Story Of Feast Bengal

All these cooking and dining traditions are reflected in the meals Bose curates as a part of Feast Bengal. “It is not a romantic “one day I woke up and launched a project” story. It  began in 2022, when she and her husband were at a restaurant called WTF! (What The Food). A friend, Komal Garg, suggested she do a “sampling”—a practical, test-like run in an industrial kitchen where recipes are executed at scale, inputs are calibrated, and acceptance is assessed. “Had it not been for Komal as well as Prashant Pallath nudging me, I wouldn’t have been here,” Bose said.

​Her approach to venues is pragmatic. The first three pop-ups were at WTF!, Versova. Kona Kona joined later when an opportunity arose. She mentioned that having a functional kitchen and a trustworthy management team were her top two priorities. Talking about drawing in diners, Bose said, “It’s quite a tough job to get people to pay and eat.” The pop-up operates as a buffet-style gathering, driven “for the love of food” and maintained by loyal supporters.

Along with being a logistical operation, the pop-up is also an extension of what she has always practised—curating, explaining, and maintaining standards. “The taste must be there. The flavour needs to be impeccable,” she says insisting on how there is no value in serving food that lacks clarity or care. And that’s exactly what she constantly tries to cultivate in her own kitchen, by maintaining the authenticity of flavour with each dish.

The Authenticity Vs Adaptability Debate

Bose avoids making authenticity a performance. She dedicates her cooking to traditional recipes passed down across generations, yet adapts them to suit Mumbai’s diners. Mustard oil is her main cooking medium and favoured at her pop-ups, but she switches to sunflower, soybean, or groundnut oil when needed for balance. She also adjusts for diners’ preferences, such as heat and spice levels.

Bose extends this logic to the authenticity-versus-adaptability debate. “We have always adapted,” she says, citing climate, economics, and socio-political forces that reshape what people cook. To illustrate this, she gives the example of  how she changed the way she consumes tehri pulao—a dish that lies between a biryani and a pulao. It was traditionally prepared with mutton however, she now uses chicken, after having given up mutton for health reasons. “And the dish tastes as good as it should,” she added.  

At a time when the national appetite for regional food flavours and local cuisines is growing, Bose’s story is less about reinvention but a return to lineage, technique, and the idea that “regional” is most meaningful when done with care and love. Her recipes, as she says, are a “living legacy”—not museum pieces, but food that changes hands and cities, and still tastes like it did where it originated.

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