Barrackpore on a platter

As a sometimes enthusiastic student of history in school, I’d often wonder what happened to those places so central to Empire—Masulipatnam, Plassey, Balasore, Barrackpore—and why they weren’t easily found in newspaper headlines of the day.

- SHALINI UMACHANDRAN

So, when the pitch for this week’s story landed in my inbox, it seemed to be an answer to that old question. Zico Ghosh has gone on the kind of zany quest we love at Lounge—to find out why Barrackpore biryani is so stupendously popular in Bengal, and how one mom-and-pop shop, Dada Boudi, gained the cult following it has. People travel hours to reach Barrackpore, stand for many hours in queues to eat this biryani, and then spend even more hours dissecting each bite to decide why it is—or isn’t—the best.