Whiff of a genteel world

Revisiting Flurys

The pink calligraphy speaks out pleasantly from its backdrop of transparent glass. ‘Flurys’, it softly announces to the genteel world around it. The name brings with it the invigorating aroma of freshly-brewed Darjeeling tea, with a whiff of warm tea cake on the side. Swing the transparent glass door open and even before you’ve entered the space the heady fragrance of nostalgia wafts into your nostrils. At Flurys, that’s a bonus. In fact, you walk into the restaurant for a reassuring feeling of deja vu. To relive old gastronomic experiences, in its familiar ambience.

For this place has been there for as long as you can remember. It is now all of 83. And Kolkata’s l’affaire d’amour with it is as many years old. Located strategically on a busy pavement of Park Street in Kolkata, Flurys is what is referred to as a traditional ‘tea room’. Now what’s that, you may well ask, given that the proliferation of cafe chains everywhere has nearly edged the expression out of circulation. Well, a tea room is to tea what a cafe is to coffee. It serves varieties of tea along with light snacks and small eats. It’s a place where you can sit for hours on end without ordering very much more than a cup of tea and proceed to spend a few blissful hours. Alone with your thoughts, or in the company of friends or business associates. But what makes Flurys a very special tea room is that some of its scrumptious bites and sips have been on its menu for the last 83 years. These delights, like the sinful rumball or the extra creamy Viennese coffee, are still produced the way a certain J Flurys started making them lovingly in 1927. Being of fine, original European vintage, these have contributed to Flurys’ iconic stature as an any-time restaurant.

“Some members of the staff have been here for the last 40 years. They received training from Flurys himself. We have always guarded our recipes closely and never tampered with them,” says Vikas Kumar, the executive chef of the eatery. With years of heritage to live up to — he is the first non-European chef to have ever occupied this position — Kumar sees his assignment at Flurys as one of great responsibility. “People enter here with a pre-set notion. There’s no scope for us to trip up. Nothing can taste different from the way it always has,” says Kumar.  The dishes on the menu marked with an ‘H’ against their names are especially tricky as they are part of the great Flurys heritage. The star among these is the any-time breakfast (it has passed into legend and has a magnificent reputation to live up to each time, every time, it’s been asked for), easily one of the most popular orders here. With a choice of seasonal fruit juice, one fried egg, sausage, two rashers of bacon, half a grilled tomato, a hash brown, and coffee or tea, it is big, wholesome and ‘H’ for heritage in the best European tradition. The toasts come warm and fresh, separately in a basket, and tempt you to butter them generously on both sides when no one’s looking.

Whether it is for the puffs or patties, sandwiches, rumballs, baba cakes or cold coffees, Flurys sticks to the original recipes, calories and all. “When a guest orders a coffee sprungli, he or she knows how rich it is in chocolate and cream. But that’s the way they like it. And it’s not every day that one orders this precursor to the cold coffee any way,” says Kumar.

But in keeping with the times, the menu now includes a variety of berry-based mousses and desserts with green tea in them. There’s also a jogger’s power breakfast with spinach juice, egg white omelette, whole wheat bread, vegetables, honey to replace sugar and green tea or decaffeinated coffee to draw up the rear. The bustling kitchen at the eatery is, in fact, a laboratory for many experiments. “The mutton puff with its curried filling is an innovation, while we are currently working on perfecting a fish puff, which will soon be on the menu,” says Kumar.
Flurys has experienced many changes over the years. In 2005, when the doors to its fresh pink-and-cream-and-brown interiors opened after renovation, one almost thought it was another place altogether. The gleaming glass, the stone on the floor, the centre piece of a tiered wedding cake and the pillars told a different, more modern, story, while the liveried waiters — some of whom you had earlier seen loitering over your coffee for anything between half an hour and 45 minutes — suddenly served you with alacrity. But you soon realised that there was one constant: The food and beverages were still the same. Exactly the way you liked them.

Still bullish in constantly reinventing itself, Flurys is now keen on becoming more child-friendly. Cupcakes and marshmallow are the latest additions to its collection of pastries and fruitcakes.

And there’s good news for those who queue up outside Flurys for their rich plum cake at Christmas time. Online ordering facilities are fully functional from this year, with an e-Payment gateway to make things simple and snappy. New generation-style. It is therefore no surprise that Flurys, with its fresh, new approach to tradition, is also going places. In the heart of Mumbai already, the brand is next travelling to Bangalore and Chennai. For the world beyond Park Street to take a giant bite off the Flurys’ pie.