Amber is to Calcutta what Moti Mahal was to Delhi. In the glory days of the late 1950s, when Sky Room and Blue Fox reigned supreme on Park Street, two foodies, the Khullar brothers, decided to bring the revolutionary concept of tandoori to Calcutta. And that’s how Amber happened. Today Sky Room is gone and Blue Fox was, in the ultimate humiliation, replaced by a McDonalds, but Amber is still going strong, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
Amber is one of Calcutta’s gastronomic landmarks, with its own hard-core following of foodies who remember a bygone era, when the world still hadn’t figured out what the heck cholesterol was all about. You can pig out here on things like Chicken Reshmi Butter Masala, Roghan Josh, Peshawari Barra and Brain Masala. Or old-time continental favourites like Baked Fish Tomato and Chicken a la Kiev (a cardiologist’s worst nightmare). If you’ve got the space for it you might even squeeze in an appetiser like their prawn cocktail, or the intriguingly named Fish Liver Gin. Raj Kapoor was apparently a regular here: just the kind of guy you’d associate with a place like this.
