One of the most iconic cafes of old Calcutta, the century-old Mitra Cafe now has several outposts in the city. People queue up for the signature diamond-cut fish fry (made from filets of Kolkata bhetki) and kabiraji cutlet (scalloped fish or meat in a filigreed mesh of whisked eggs). Offal lovers come especially for the brain chop: breaded croquettes made with spiced goat brain.

In his book Sweet Invention, historian Michael Krondl calls Nakur the prince among Bengal’s moira, or traditional confectioners. The 177-year-old shop, located in a quiet north Kolkata neighborhood, is revered in the city for its sandesh, a genre of Bengali artisanal sweetmeat made with fresh chhana. The shop has innovated and expanded its repertoire of sandesh to include a mind-boggling variety of flavors, including mango, dark chocolate, mulberry, black currant, butterscotch, and so many more.

It isn’t easy navigating the complex maze of congested streets, teeming with people and vehicles, that make up Burra Bazar. The area is Calcutta’s busiest commercial district and one of the country’s largest wholesale and retail market complexes. It’s also a hub for the city’s Marwari community, which started migrating to Calcutta from Rajasthan in the 18th century. Naturally, the lanes and alleys are strewn with shops selling the community’s favorite snacks and sweets, including one favorite, Badri ki Kachori. The stand serves Rajasthani khasta kachoris (flattened balls of crusty pastry stuffed with lentils), topped with sev (thick strands of fried gram flour) and ladles of a creamy, spicy curry of diced potatoes and gram flour. The kachoris are finished with a swirl of chile-infused oil and some freshly chopped coriander leaves.

At the turn of the 20th century, Ahmed Hussain migrated to Calcutta from Lucknow and set up a small eatery with only three items on the menu: khuska (a light dish of turmeric-tinged rice), lightly spiced qaliya made with chunks of goat meat, and mutton chaap (slices of goat meat braised with a rich blend of alliums and spices and pan-roasted in clarified butter). More than a century later, Royal is one of the luminaries of Kolkata’s fabled Mughlai cuisine. The menu has expanded over time, but the place is still synonymous with chaap (now also made with whole chicken legs). The signature, crowd-favorite biryani doesn’t include potatoes, in keeping with the tradition of Hussain’s native Lucknow; instead, big chunks of meat and a few tiny meatballs nestle in a bed of fragrant, fluffy grains of long-grain rice. Note: A few years ago, the restaurant opened a glitzy outlet in Park Circus where it serves Kolkata-style biryani, complete with a glistening orange potato.

The history of this nonagenarian pice hotel is closely associated with India’s struggle for freedom. In addition to serving homey, budget meals to students and workers, in the pre-independence era the eatery doubled as a hideout for revolutionaries. The menu is studded with pescatarian favorites like fish roe fritters — unctuous paves of katla cooked in chile-red gravy — and jumbo prawns simmered in coconut milk, though the array of vegetarian dishes also challenges the notion that Bengali cuisine depends entirely on fish and meat. The pui chorchori — malabar spinach cooked with assorted vegetables and fried fish head — has been the best-selling item for nine decades now.

This century-old kebab shop is tucked away inside a warren of narrow lanes in a bustling central Kolkata neighborhood. Adam’s is famous for sutli kebab, spiced mince skillfully skewered and grilled on glowing embers. The kebab gets its name from sutli, cotton thread that is deftly twined around the skewer so it doesn’t disintegrate. Once the kebab is done, the thread is pulled out, and the moist, smoky meat crumbles onto the plate. The melt-in-your-mouth meat, textured with bits of charred crust, is served with slivers of raw onions and a wedge of lime. Adam’s is one of the most popular stops for those who visit the area during Ramadan, when the neighborhood morphs into an Iftar bazaar every evening.

This sliver of a shop in the heart of Kolkata’s historic college district is especially popular with students, who crowd in among the Italian marble-topped tables and walls adorned with sepia-toned photographs, framed newspaper clippings, and trophy mounts. They come especially on hot, sultry afternoons to cool off over their favorite sharbats: milk- or water-based beverages flavored with house-made syrups (rose, green mango, passionfruit, lemon, banana), enlivened with dried fruits and nuts, dollops of thick cream, or luscious rabdi (sweetened, reduced milk). The 104-year-old shop was conceived as a cover for anti-colonial activities and served as a hideout for Indian revolutionaries fighting the British regime. Paramount’s most celebrated drink, the daab sharbat — a refreshing blend of coconut water, crushed ice, syrup, and shreds of soft, tender coconut flesh — is said to be the brainchild of world-renowned Indian chemist Acharya Sir Prafulla Chandra Ray.

Many Chinese immigrants migrated to Bengal in the 1800s to work in trader Tong Atchew’s sugar mill and British tea plantations, creating a historic Chinatown. Tung Nam is an unpretentious eatery tucked in an alley in the heart of the area. Inside, the Hsieh family dishes out treasured family recipes: shreds of pork simmered in an umami-rich broth with salt-cured Chinese greens, silken wantons, kaptai mei fun (pig offal on rice noodles), and pork in hamei sauce that purportedly gets its distinct flavor from fermented shrimp paste.

By the late 19th century, Calcutta was home to a sizable community of Baghdadi Jews who came to the thriving city in search of economic opportunities. Among them was Nahoum Israel Mordecai, who opened a confectionery inside the city’s historic Hogg Market (New Market to locals) in 1902. Only a fraction of the Jewish community remains in the city today, but 120 years on, Nahoum’s popularity is intact. Everything hearkens back to another era: antique teak furniture, huge glass display cases, the century-old cash register, and age-old recipes. The shop is best known for its classic macaroons, spicy rum balls, jam tarts, almond pastries, and — surprisingly — Christmas specials like mincemeat pies and rich fruitcakes. There are also other global Jewish specialties like challah and caraway-studded savory cookies called kaka.

Situated in the bustling New Market area, Kasturi is packed most days. The kitchen serves Bangladesh’s Dhakai food, distinguished by robust flavors and the bold use of mustard and chiles. The menu features different kinds of bhorta (various ingredients spiced and mashed) and shile bata (spiced chicken or dried fish, ground into a paste on a grinding stone), Dhaka’s famed morog (cock) pulao, and a rich bhetki bhapa (thick slabs of sea bass slathered with a mustard-based marinade and baked in foil boxes). But the star dish is kochupata chingri, taro leaves and tiny prawns cooked together in pungent mustard paste and finished with lashings of sharp mustard oil.

Few things are as ubiquitous on the streets of Kolkata as kathi rolls: chunks of spiced, grilled meat, topped with shards of onions, chopped green chiles, and a squeeze of lime, all rolled up in flaky parathas and fried on a griddle. Sold out of pushcarts, street stalls, and restaurants, the kathi roll is Kolkata’s favorite grub on the go. Even if loyalties are divided among the city’s many roll joints, 51-year-old Kusum, a takeaway counter that occupies a prime spot on Park Street, is among the top contenders. For a truly indulgent treat, ask for a double portion of meat in your roll.

A stretch of bustling Russell Street, just off Park Street, is occupied by street food vendors dishing out smoking-hot ghugni (curried yellow peas topped with puckeringly tart tamarind chutney and finely chopped onions) and tossing crisp puffed rice in aluminum tins with peanuts, chopped onions and chiles, bits of coconut, gram flour crispies, and pungent mustard oil. The biggest crowd gathers around the phuchkawala, who has been serving here for decades. The cook deftly pokes holes into crisp phuchka shells (hollow crisp spheres of fried wheat dough) with his thumb, stuffs them with blobs of spiced mashed potatoes, and dips them into a pot of fragrant tamarind water.

This iconic Park Street tearoom and bakery was established in 1927 by Swiss expats Joseph and Freida Flury and their compatriot Quinto Cinzio Trinca. It has become one of Kolkata’s most iconic eateries and continues to do brisk business with heritage platters of baked beans on toast and English breakfast. Flurys has expanded its menu over the years, but the original items, marked on the menu, are still the best. Come Christmas, the place is swamped with patrons who queue up for the bakery’s rich, spiced plum cakes. Other must-trys are the inimitable chicken patties (flaky domes of puff pastry packed with minced meat stuffing) and strawberry cubes (crumby sponge layered with buttercream beneath a sugary crust of pink strawberry icing).

Tibetan momos are easily among Kolkata’s favorite snacks, and restaurateur Doma Wang is often dubbed the city’s momo queen. A native of Kalimpong, Wang has been running a restaurant inside Kolkata’s Sikkim House for more than two decades. Now called Blue Poppy Thakali, the restaurant serves food from Wang’s home in the Himalayas, a mix of Tibetan and Nepali dishes with a few Chinese favorites thrown in. While her pork kothay (pot stickers) and delicate-skinned momos stuffed with juicy mincemeat have a cult following, old-timers swear by her chile pork. Also look out for meat-filled Tibetan pies called phalay, fortifying bowls of thukpa (Tibetan noodle soup), Nepal’s famed sel roti (ring-shaped fried bread made of rice flour), sungur ko masu with rai saag (pork cooked with mustard greens), and regional condiments like gundruk, or fermented radish leaves.

Sorano, a glamorous new Italian joint in town, occupies a 4,500-square-foot spot on the first floor of the century-old Harrington Residency, a mansion turned hotel that also houses the iconic Harrington Street Art Centre. Within months of its inception, the restaurant built a glittering reputation on the strength of its Neapolitan-style pizzas, hand-rolled pasta, and funky cocktails. Sorano is named after a small town in Tuscany, and the menu explores different regions of Italy. But the kitchen sources ingredients from select vendors and farms outside of Kolkata to make fresh pastas, breads, and cheeses in-house. When they’re not busy admiring the large mosaic-clad wood-fired oven next to the bar, guests can watch their pasta being kneaded, rolled, and shaped through the “Pasta Fresca” window.

Royal Vega, the vegetarian luxury dining restaurant at the ITC Royal Bengal hotel, serves the hyperlocal cuisine of Bengal’s Sheherwali Jains, a community of wealthy Oswal Jain merchants from Rajasthan who migrated to Bengal in the early 18th century and settled near Murshidabad, then the capital of the Nawabs of Bengal. Royal Vega’s special Sheherwali menu features classic recipes sourced from the community’s home kitchens, like fragrant pulao perked up with water chestnut, crusty kachoris (deep-fried pastries) stuffed with spiced cucumber and yogurt, and a luscious wet pudding made of tart raw mangoes.

The much-hyped Chinese breakfast in Tiretti Bazaar is only a shadow of what it once was. Skip it, and head instead to Ah Yung across town in Tangra (Kolkata’s second Chinatown). The restaurant serves a filling breakfast of the curiously christened singara chow: steamed pork wontons (resembling samosas, or “singara” in the local lingo), nestled in a bed of noodles topped with Chinese greens and shreds of pork. It’s served with a savory broth fortified with pork lard and some fiery chile sauce made in-house.

With chic interiors, an open-air courtyard (particularly crowded during winter) that hosts live music, a well-stocked bar, and an elegant menu, the Salt House is one of Kolkata’s most popular spots. The restaurant serves a largely European menu with a bit of Mediterranean and regional Indian cuisines stirred into the mix. Some of the dishes come with quirky twists. The roasted pork belly is dressed in vindaloo jus and served with a side of zesty fried rice tossed with fiery Goan sausage, while the Bengali prawn malaikari (a satiny curry of prawns cooked in coconut milk) is folded into al dente risotto.

Zam Zam started out as a utilitarian working-class eatery in a narrow, obscure lane in central Kolkata’s Entally area. A few years ago, the restaurant launched a swanky family-friendly outpost in the Park Circus area. Most people go to Zam Zam for the gently spiced beef biryani (typically found at Muslim weddings in Kolkata) served with a spicy yogurt drink called borhani, and the luscious beef malai in which chunks of beef float in a pool of cream-laden gravy best mopped up with parathas. The beef rolls, crammed with smoky nuggets of chargrilled beef, are immensely popular too.

A glass display box showcases the crumb-coated dainties on offer at this matchbox-size shop in a humble south Kolkata neighborhood. There are spicy croquettes of boiled eggs sheathed in minced meat, thick slabs of breaded fish, and more. The fish fry is legendary, but the standout dish here is the fish roll: plump paupiettes of bhetki stuffed with a sprightly mixture of minced fish and prawns, rolled in crumbs, and fried to a crisp. Apanjan opens in the afternoon and closes at 9 p.m., but the best items sell out early.

This charming cafe started out as an adjunct of Sienna, the retail outlet of a Shantiniketan-based ceramics workshop run by a mother-daughter duo. But over time, the food side of the business has established its own identity with a crisp, straightforward menu focused on global comfort food: robust burgers, perfectly cooked omelets, toasts with assorted toppings, and creamy risottos made with local varieties of rice. Chef Auroni Mookerjee champions all things local and sustainable. His more adventurous weekend menus use only fresh, seasonal produce that can be sourced that day — foraged greens, wild mushrooms, duck eggs, varieties of small fish that usually don’t make it to restaurant tables — in a style Mookerjee calls bazaar-to-table.

Kolkata loves its Punjabi food. The city is dotted with dhaba-style eateries (roadside pit stops in North India) and other casual restaurants that serve a standard fare of dal makhani, malai paneer, and chicken butter masala. For more than a decade now, Punjabee Rasoi, run by husband-and-wife duo PV and Preeti Raju, has been quietly turning out some of the best Punjabi food in the city. The menu features a panoply of spirited curries, stuffed breads, and tandoor specialties, but the one dish everyone orders is the adrak ke panje: smoky, chargrilled goat ribs flavored with ginger and spices.

It is widely believed that the dum pukht-style biryani traveled to colonial Calcutta with the entourage of Wajid Ali Shah, the nawab of Awadh, who was exiled to Calcutta by the British in 1858. The nawab’s cooks are often credited for adding potatoes to the rice-and-meat dish that gave Kolkata biryani its singular identity. Manzilat Fatimah (Manzi to her friends and patrons), a direct descendant of the nawab, serves up her family’s signature biryani cooked in pungent mustard oil at a small eatery she runs from her home’s terrace. But her menu goes beyond the popular rice-and-meat dish to include other Awadhi specialties that are more likely to have appeared on the nawab’s table: elegant yakhni pulao, melty galawati kebabs, gossamer parathas cooked on an upended tawa, pasanda (thin slivers of spiced meat), and shahi phirni, a custard-like pudding made with ground rice, milk, and nuts.