Lalit, Ravi and Nikunj — all from the same Beriwala family in Rajarhat — were at Salt Lake City Centre with friend Rabindra Sharma on Saturday to check out the different varieties of mangoes on sale. “We have a small mango orchard and are very enthusiastic about the fruit. This is the perfect place to taste, smell and increase our GK on mangoes,” said Lalit, after buying a kilogram of Alphonsos.

Basabi Ghosh knew what she wanted when she walked up to the Fresh and Naturelle stall at City Centre Salt Lake on Friday evening: Himsagar ice cream. The man at the counter suggested she try the Alphonso ice cream instead. “You must be from Bombay?” asked the homemaker. “Yes,” he replied. “I lived in Bombay too till I got married and moved to Calcutta 40 years ago. I grew up having Alphonso and let me tell you, Himsagar and Lyangra are better, any day,” said the mango connoisseur, New York-based daughter Nandita by her side.

Ghosh and thousands of others who love their mango thronged the Salt Lake and New Town City Centres on Friday and Saturday, braving the afternoon swelter and the evening showers, to dig into the pulp platter laid out as part of Mango Mania, a three-day festival presented by t2 and City Centre. Head to the two venues between 2pm and 8.30pm on Sunday, the last day of the festival, to slurp and sip your way to mango heaven. Ten stalls at Salt Lake and seven at New Town are selling a wide variety of mango delights. If you like your fruit straight, local stars like Golapkhas and Lyangra along with guests from UP and Maharashtra like Chausa and Alphonso will offer you options aplenty.

JU students Chandrima Paul, Ashmita Banerjee, Sreeja Kundu and Ishita Ray chose the Kund area for their evening adda session with glasses of Kancha Aamer Shorbot from Kapila Ashram. “We will also try sweets from Nalin Chandra Das & Sons that everybody is talking about,” said the chirpy group when Metro caught up with them.

Sweet dreams are made of mangoes in this season of celebrating the king of pulp.

From the traditional rabri to the trendy double-decker, almost every sinful delicacy on the shelves of sweet shops around town seems to have undergone a mango makeover. Fuelling the frenzy is not only a bumper crop in Bengal but also the t2 Mango Mania festival, a three-day tribute to all things mango that ends at City Centre Salt Lake and New Town on Sunday.

“The beauty of this fruit is that its demand cuts across tastes. Since everyone seems game for a bite of mango-flavoured sweet, we have tried experimenting in almost every possible way,” said Prikshit Gupta of Gupta Brothers.

The landmark New Alipore sweet stop isn’t the only one trying to…er…beat the competition to pulp by rolling out an assembly line of mango-laced treats.

“We have mixed mango pulp with crushed coconut and cashew to create the Aamer Moushumi Sandesh and our loyalists have lapped it up,” said Partha Nandy of the 169-year-old Nakur Nandy and Girish Chandra Dey of north Calcutta. “The same holds true of our Amrapali Sandesh. If pujas can be theme-based, why can’t mishti reinvent itself?”

The scramble to create that special sweet out of mango also has to do with Bengal’s production of the fruit shooting up nearly 15 per cent over last year. Better still, the cream of the crop is apparently being sold at reasonable rates.

“The mango harvest is around 7.23 lakh tonnes, the highest in recent years,” declared Piyush Kanti Pramanick, director of the department of horticulture. “The surplus has allowed Bengal to supply mangoes to neighbouring states. Everyone is happy with the produce.”

The show stealers at New Town were the mango-stuffed parathas at the Zaikaa Pav stall. “I dragged him here to taste these parathas with me,” said Mou Dutta, sharing a plate with business partner Subroto Ghosh on Friday. He said he might grab “some more bites” though he was not too fond of mangoes”. The paratha pick? The Sweet Mango Lachha Paratha served with green mango chutney and sweet mango pieces.

Vikas Kumar, executive chef at Flurys, thinks the best of the season is still ahead. He should know. He hails from a family in Uttar Pradesh that owns orchards.

“The surfeit of mangoes this season means prices are affordable, which is the best news. Weather plays an important role in mango production and fortunately there haven’t been too many storms this year. At Flurys, we only use tree-ripened mangoes in our items,” Kumar said.

Although the mango food festival at Flurys ended on June 2, some of the confectionery items like cupcakes and tarts are still available. “The best mango, which is the lyangra, has yet to hit the market in large numbers. I am sure sweets will taste even better with lyangra,” promised Kumar.

Mango is ruling even the banquet menus at star hotels. “We served fresh diced mango with vanilla bean ice cream on Sunday during the Italian National Day celebration at the Ballroom and it was a hit among the guests. It is a classic combination and what can be better than teaming mango with vanilla ice cream?” said Saurav Oberoi, executive chef, The Oberoi Grand.

The Pastry Shop at the HHI is hosting a mango festival called Go ManGo For It, from June 7 “till the mango is in season”. The chef-recommended pastries are Mango Tiramisu Slice, Mango Flan, Mango Cheese Slice, Mango Crumble and Mango Straddle.

At the t2 Mango Mania festival, the standard mango-flavoured sandesh has made way for multiple items, each seeking to be different from the other in look, feel and taste. Some of the names are variations, others plain imaginative. Sift through a stall and you find a Mango Double-Decker Sandesh, a Mango Gelato Sandesh or a Mango Cremona Sandesh sitting pretty beside a slightly more traditional-sounding Mango Chaanar Payesh.

Class VI student Sagnik Sarkar was so delighted with the Himsagar ice cream at Pabrai’s Fresh & Naturelle that he coaxed his mother to sample a spoonful. “Everybody should taste this,” said the young New Alipore resident.

“We have introduced around 10 new mango mishtis exclusively for the t2 Mango Mania festival. Some of them are Mango Ice Cream Sandesh, Mango Malai Roll and Mango Rabri. Since the quantity and quality of the mango produce this year are good, the sweets are tasting better as well,” said Tapan Kumar Das of Nalin Chandra Das & Sons.

Market experts say innovation is as much a survival strategy for the big players in the business as a diversion from traditional sweet-making. And when a versatile fruit such as the mango is available in abundance, the creative juices flow.

“The perception that Bengali sweets are mostly rosogolla, sandesh or doi is changing. So now we have Mango Rabri and Mango Chandan Kheer to tickle the taste buds of those who want the best of both aam and mishti,” said Amitava Dey of the 160-year-old Felu Modak, in Rishra.

Little Mysha was literally licking her lips after having The Mango Cream Cup from Krishna Juice Corner at New Town on Friday

The demand for new products is not restricted to Bengal, where the industry has an annual turnover of around Rs 50,000 crore with more than one lakh shops vying for a slice of the sweet.

This season, the innovative fusion of mango with sandesh or kheer has hit the sweet spot even outside the state.

“Our requirement of mangoes has gone up 20 per cent this year,” said Sudip Mullick of Balaram Mullick & Radharaman Mullick. “The Mango Cremona Sandesh, which is a bit of Italy fused with aam, and the Mango Gelato are moving out in sealed cartons to customers in other states.”

The demand for mangoes whole, chopped and topped has also soared with preparations for the wedding season. Some have asked their event managers and caterers to create “an orchard” with 10 to 15 varieties of mango sweets. “Discussions on the menu aren’t complete without somebody asking for a mango-flavoured something. The fruit has to be there and customers want it in different forms,” smiled Monojit Bose of Bhoj Caterers.

Maybe it’s time to give aam admi a new definition.

Pictures by Anindya Shankar Ray and Arnab Mondal