He talks and writes his food and of course, eats it too!

KOLKATA: Kalyan Karmakar practices Buddhism by choice. It makes him happy and fills him with peace. Only one more thing gives him a similar experience, food - smelling, cooking, thinking, talking, writing and of course, eating it. Nothing unites souls better than food said this city boy who has now relocated to Mumbai and is one of the most celebrated food writers today.Karmakar is currently in town to give his signature food talks, which took off from his recently published book - The Travelling Belly.
From being born in Canterbury, England, to spending pre-school years in Iran, growing up in Kolkata and choosing to settle down in Mumbai...from being a sociology graduate to a trained market analyst and a researcher to a full-time food writer, it has been quite a journey for this 43-year-old. But he has insatiable taste buds that crave for more.
The word food takes him back to some earliest vignettes like his distaste for Bengali food and his love for everything continental. "Food meant fish and chips or sandwiches, salads or pasta...the jhol, jhal and kasha tasted strange...so strange that I would refuse to eat Bengali food. Life changes suddenly after my father's death. My mother started teaching in a college and had little time to cook what I wanted. I had to make peace with Bengali food and finally realised what I had missed. My grandmother, remains the world's best chef for me," he says.
His first brush with Mumbai happened when he was posted there for market research for the company he worked at. The Presidency College graduate for whom eating out meant Promod da's canteen fish chops, kachuri at Putiram or stew from the YMCA canteen, it was a quantum leap to the world of pubs, old school continental at Churchill, kebabs at Colaba's Bademiya or cocktails with snacks at Leopold Cafe. "This culinary journey was taking me into the annals of many cultures and communities... I realised had to start documenting this journey... I started food blog 'Finely Chopped' in 2007," he said.
As Karmakar wove his virtual food web that got him travelling across the country to experience cuisines, he got overwhelming response. Some of this was in the form of food walks that once found him in some of the city's heritage snacking haunts like Mitra Cafe and Allen's.