In the narrow lanes of Santiniketan, a modest home with an old-world charm opens its doors to strangers, serving not just food but an immersive journey through rivers, railways, ports and colonial history. Chef Amrita Bhattacharya and her husband, filmmaker-academic Amit Sen, call this experiment Handpicked by Amrita.
An ode to the couple’s culinary journey across the globe, Handpicked by Amrita offers fascinating stories behind the food they serve. Both Amrita and Amit are food anthropologists who trace the migrations of communities and the dishes they carried with them.
“It’s not about good or bad taste. It’s about the story that lives inside the food,” Amrita said.
Their story did not begin in a kitchen — it began in a classroom. Amit, a veteran of Kolkata’s film industry and a visiting professor at film institutes, met Amrita at a Tagore studies programme in 2009, where she was one of the youngest teachers and he, one of the eldest students. They married in 2013. Amrita was then a Bangla assistant professor, living the predictability of academia until the pandemic upended her life.
“It was during lockdown that I realised I didn’t want to retire without creating something of my own,” said Amrita.
They built a home in Santiniketan—initially as a retreat—but soon discovered it could be the heart of a new kind of culinary research. “We weren’t setting up a restaurant. This was not a business. It was an open lab for everything we were learning about food, migration, and culture.”
Their home-kitchen project became Handpicked by Amrita, where guests experience a tasting menu tied to specific research themes. One of their main areas of focus is the diasporic journeys of Bengalis—from Barishal to Burma and from Andaman to Amritsar—and how those migrations shaped family recipes.
“People think Bengalis are one ethnic group, but we are really a linguistic community with varied ancestries,” said Amit.
Their research uncovers dishes lost in time. Hilsa cooked with lemongrass in Burmese style. Payesh made from short-grained Andaman rice, mutton curries sans potato because their bearers migrated before the tuber reached India — for Amit and Amrita, every meal is a story in itself, an act of preservation and resurrection.
Their most evocative project so far took them to the Andaman Islands, where they explored old settlements. Some of them were occupied by refugees, some by convicts. Bengali farmers and Burmese Karen migrants also lived on these Islands.
“There’s a village there where women still cook food their ancestors brought from Barishal, unchanged for decades. They served it to us with pride. That’s what we bring back to our table,” Amrita recalled.
But the pop-up meals are not easy to stage. They require weeks of ingredient sourcing, foraging, prep, and storytelling. “It’s draining for Amrita. But it’s also exhilarating. We’re not serving food. We’re serving memory, layered with identity and politics,” Amit admitted.
Invitations now come from universities and culinary institutes, and they are planning on a graphic novel that will combine recipes with stories from their field research. “Each chapter will end in a dish,” said Amit.
Despite the acclaim, Handpicked by Amrita remains intensely local, anchored in seasonal produce and cultural specificity. “There is no fixed menu. We serve what the land offers and what the story demands,” Amrita said.
For those lucky enough to attend a pop-up, the experience is intimate, profound, and deeply moving. “One guest broke down in tears. He said it tasted just like how his mother cooked. That’s our reward,” Amit shared.
As Amit and Amrita prepare for sessions in Mumbai, Bangalore, and Chennai, they remain committed to their original vision — just two storytellers serving intriguing tales through food.