Barrackpore-style Mutton Biryani, Daab Ilish, Mangsher Chop, Muri Ghonto and more! No, this isn’t the menu of yet-another Bengali restaurant in Kolkata. Not even in India.
This is what the residents of Tokyo are enjoying at the Puja Bengali Restaurant, run by an Indo-Japanese couple Hiroaki and Sanchita Nagagata since 2006.
In an exclusive chat with My Kolkata, the couple shared their journey and mutual love for Bengali food.
Their story began in 1995, when Hiroaki Nagagata met young Sanchita Ghosh while visiting Visva-Bharati.
The young Japanese boy not only fell in love with a girl from Santiniketan, but also with the Bengali culture, especially the food.
“We met in 1995 and five years later got married. We moved to Japan after our marriage, but before that, Hiroaki spent years learning Bengali recipes. He would spend time with my family and the locals. He would go to the local bazaars. That’s how he fell in love with the flavours,” Sanchita said about her husband, who takes care of the kitchen at Puja Bengali Restaurant in Tokyo’s Arakawa City, home to Olympic swimming gold medallists and athletes, singers, writers and of course, sumo wrestlers.
In 2006, Hiroaki and Sanchita opened the 24-seater Indian restaurant after the husband decided to give up his part-time job and involve his homemaker wife in the culinary business.
“We started as a restaurant serving Indian food. We served everything from naan to butter chicken and paneer butter masala. When I got pregnant with my second child in 2014, Hiroaki decided to turn it into a Bengali restaurant. While I was away, he experimented with Bengali food,” shared Sanchita, who has spent 25 years in the country and can understand the Japanese, and speak haltingly.
Puja Bengali Restaurant, which has been named after their first-born daughter, now serves only Bengali cuisine. A signboard outside the restaurant says, “Naan not available here” in Japanese.
Sanchita, who grew up in West Bengal, takes pride in her husband’s culinary skills. She helps in the daily operations of the restaurant while Hiroaki does the cooking. Not only Japanese, but Indians, especially Bengalis, visiting the restaurant laud the food at Puja. “When we started off, our curries took a special place in foodies’ hearts. To the Japanese, every dish with gravy was a curry. But gradually, we explained the dishes to them. We try to stick to authentic recipes.”
Comparing Japan’s love for rice and fish, Sanchita said, “Japanese people are used to eating fish without bones. When they eat fish cooked Bengali-style, the bones cause problems. They pick out the bones from the mouth and ask how we eat them. I tell them that picking bones stimulates the mind and that’s why Bengalis are this creative,” chuckled Sanchita.
Hiroaki finds joy in cooking recipes he picked up throughout the years from his in-laws back in Bengal. Every year, they plan a trip to Santiniketan with the whole family and the culinary master’s research with Bengali cuisine continues. Recently, they have also introduced Barrackpore-style mutton biryani — bringing Bengalis’ love for biryani to the capital city of Japan.
The aesthetics of the restaurant is full of Bangaliana. A Durga idol stands tall against one wall, the floors are decorated with alpona, and the wooden tables and chairs laid out with madur (a Bengali-style mat woven from reeds called madurkathi).
As sushi takes centre stage at many restaurants in Kolkata, this Japanese-Indo couple has created a niche for Bengali food and Kolkata favourites at the heart of Tokyo.
“We don’t want to do anything extraordinary. We are happy feeding simple, authentic food of my homeland to foodies in Japan and others visiting Japan. There are many Indian restaurants in Japan, there are even restaurants serving Bangladeshi food. But the food that West Bengal is known for is served only at Puja Bengali Restaurant,” concluded Sanchita.
