Living outside Kolkata for years and being a die-hard bengali foodie is very tough. You never stop dreaming about food, specially bengali food. So I make a special shortlist of restaurants before visiting Kolkata during Dec holidays. And since this is my first visit to Kolkata after 2019, due to covid travel restrictions from Sydney, AU, I was following a few bengali vloggers in YouTube for restaurant recommendations. House of Royals did not live upto its reputation, despite some vloggers claiming this restaurant as the next big thing that has hit the salt lake crowd. Well, that's my humble opinion as a paying customer and not paid for promotion!

Went with 3 friends, didn't order their thalis, as I went by the recommendation from the vloggers. As entrees, we ordered fish fries (came with potato wedges), golden prawn fry (came with the same wedges) and keema pao with poached egg on top. The fish fries were very thin, they used bhetki fish fillet and even though it was not the quintessential kolkata fish fry from one of the famous cafes, it tasted good. Unfortunately the wedges were not boiled fully, so were bit hard and very low on salt, so we didn't even touch it. The golden prawns fry was a disappointment, the batter were soggy, not crunchy and didn't taste good, though the jumbo prawn used inside the batter was quite big and soft, and the problem with wedges were the same as the fish fry - hard and low on salt. The keema pao was another story though, was a brilliant dish and a very modern take on the Mumbai dish, which blew our minds! To be honest, the keema pao was the saving grace of our entrees and can visit the restaurant again, to finish off a few more plates of that keema pao!

Next was the mains and you are not a true Bong if you are not ordering biriyani and chaap if you visiting this kind of restaurant. So we ordered the chicken biriyani and chicken chaap. The biriyani was okay, bit surprised to see cashews on top of the biriyani as my olfactory senses started questioning if it was a biriyani or a pulao. Taste was okay, above average-ish. I somehow didn't like the chaap preparation at all, just didn't cut it. Felt something was missing and not making the combo complete for me. Sorry, hate to give bad (but honest) feedback!

I am traditional bengali middle aged foodie, love the saying - "don't fix what's not broken". The bengali biriyani, chaap and fish fry are recipes that have been perfected and passed down through generations. There are so many current bengali vloggers who have gone to crazy levels of posting comparative analysis and almost Masters PhD thesis over which biriyani and chaap to swear by in Kolkata - be it D-Bapi, or Dada Boudi, or Arsanal, or Siraj or Aminia or New Aliah etc etc. So HoR is trying to experiment on a very sacred soil which can bring in a lot of feedback/criticism. So I think this was expected. And it also gave me a new perspective of not taking all vloggers feedback on face value, rather with a pinch of salt and some further analysis for my next Dec's Kolkata eating list!

In the mean time, if anyone is visiting this restaurant, their keema pao is to die for and order that with your eyes closed!