Peter Cat

Peter Cat has stood on Park Street since 1975, opened by the same family that runs Mocambo two doors down, and remains the single most iconic casual restaurant in Kolkata. The dining room is a subterranean, windowless, red-and-brown wood-panelled cavern that has resisted renovation almost entirely — the carpets, the brass fittings, the Raj-era furniture, and the waiters in waistcoats are much as they were in the 1980s.

The menu's headline act is the Chelo Kebab — a plate of saffron-buttered basmati rice topped with a fried egg, served with two grilled kebabs (mutton or chicken) and a pat of butter that melts into the rice at the table. It is neither Iranian chelo kebab (the name's origin) nor fully Indian kebab; it is a Kolkata hybrid that has become a local dish.

The rest of the menu covers Park Street continental: Devilled Crab, Chicken à la Kiev, Fish Meunière, Prawn Cocktail, Baked Alaska. The cooking is not haute cuisine — it is 1970s colonial-continental done with precision and without apology, which is the whole point.

Peter Cat takes no reservations. The queues at 8 p.m. on a Saturday stretch onto Park Street; regulars arrive by 6:30 or after 9:45. The wait is part of the restaurant's fabric — people see their former schoolmates, bump into neighbours, and catch up on Park Street gossip. For a Kolkata birthday dinner, it is a tradition.

Why it fits Birthday

Birthday belongs here because Peter Cat is the Kolkata birthday dinner — the one every local ate on their fifteenth birthday, celebrated their first job at, and still returns to in their forties. A chelo kebab and a round of Baked Alaska is a more culturally-specific celebration than any Oberoi buffet.