Roll Call
In a city full of institutions, Nizam’s in Kolkata is one more, says Rimi B. Chatterjee

 
Stand in front of Nizam’s restaurant on the northeast side of Market Square (now Chaplin Square) and look left. You will see the gingerbread fretwork of the S.S. Hogg Market, better known as New Market. To your right, and you will see the Elite cinema hall. Dead ahead is the revamped Chaplin Theatre and the Calcutta Municipal Corporation, with an odd-looking walkway running from it over your head. Towering over you is the Hotel Raunak, colonised by a mini rainforest that seems to coexist peacefully with the Indo-Saracenic flourishes of its façade. All around you will waft the smell of Nizam’s speciality: the kathi roll. So called because the meat (or paneer in the veggie version) is first grilled on a skewer (kathi), then wrapped, along with spices, onions, green chillies and a splash of lime juice, in a fried paratha. The meat could be chicken, mutton or beef; traditionally it was the beef roll that made Nizam’s a name. The whole is wrapped neatly in a square of greyish paper and there you have it, Calcutta’s answer to the sandwich. Made in a jiffy while you wait and watch, easily eaten on the run, this is Mughlai-a-go-go.

The kathi roll was invented by Sheikh Hasan Reza who came to Calcutta from Benaras, started as a peon at the Corporation, then decided he would be better off feeding hungry office workers and shoppers. His little roadside stall grew into Nizam’s, established 1932. Before Nizam’s closed temporarily in 2001, there was a section, headed by the legendary Jamal, which made rolls right on the street much as Hasan Reza had done, and delivered them steaming to your hand almost as you walked past. And many walked past: fashionable ladies shopping at New Market, cinemagoers, tourists, office-workers and students. Nizam’s welcomed them all. Even today, with prices starting at Rs 20 for a basic chicken roll, there is a large-hearted hospitality to diners of every budget. And the factor that really makes the difference at Nizam’s is the attitude of the staff. Nattily dressed in green shalwar kurtas, they will guide you through the menu and talk at length about Nizam’s with the magisterial air of chhota Nizams. They will introduce you to the delights of ‘tumtum biryani’ (biryani with tomatoes in it), reputedly created in the 1970s to please the manager of Elite.

But Nizam’s has also had a bit more than its fair share of troubles. What you see today is the new Nizam’s; the restaurant reopened in 2006 after a 29-month closure following a standoff with the CITU-backed workers’ union. The redone restaurant with its plaster-moulded ceiling, tiger-stripe sofas and prolapsed LED lights isn’t exactly stylish, although everything is spotlessly clean and the marble underfoot is spectacular. One wall has been colonised by a pair of portaloo-type plastic-board-and-aluminium cabins installed in the main dining hall, which are the toilet and washbasin. Surely the management could have saved the money they spent on the ceiling lights to build a less intrusive eyesore of a washroom?

Another change that will annoy the traditionalists is the segregation of the ‘beef’ and ‘no beef’ sections. The main restaurant is ‘no beef’, while the Nizam’s Mughal Gardens next door is the ‘beef’ section. For many this is a betrayal of everything Nizam’s stood for. For New Market has always been a place where Calcutta went to sample the food of the many cultures that have mingled in the city, from Nahoum’s cakes to Kalman’s ham and Hungarian sausages, and Nizam’s filled the Mughlai niche in the culinary ecosystem of the area. But the new manager is a Bengali, according to the staff, and has decided that Nizam’s must remake itself as a family restaurant for the majority community. One section is now being airconditioned and is to be turned into a ‘food court’. Perhaps the new KFC and McDonald’s outlets in the  area have prompted this decision.

But there is a curiously half-hearted air to the changes, as though Nizam’s is just going through the motions of ‘modernisation’ for the look of the thing. This half-heartedness is widespread through New Market and its environs, even though malls have taken away all but the most dedicated of shoppers and falling profits have softened people’s attitudes to change. Nevertheless, a little band of aficionados, in which I must include myself, know that New Market has a secret the malls will never have: its magic name protects it from ever being old. You might park your car in the spanking new automated parking plaza, as I did, have a coffee in its attached underground mall, but you’ll still go to Nizam’s for your kathi roll, moulded ceiling or no.

Nizam’s Restaurant, 23/24, Hogg Street, New Market, Kolkata; open 1pm to 10pm