‘The Cafe Corner’ of old Dhaka still shines

The House of Nawabs, the old Dhaka is also famous for its great Afghan-origin food.

Once vibrant, the cradle of the city inherits royal architecture, a river port and many more cultural components to explore.

It is very difficult to find people who do not appreciate the old-Dhakaia food. This place contains long stories of delicious food.

If you want to explore old Dhaka, it always surprises you with its old food and spicy cuisine. There are many midnight savouring stories here!

Hence we are going to explore another food gem of old Dhaka. ‘The Cafe Corner’ has been there since 1962. This cafe is one of the famous restaurants of what we call now old Dhaka. It was the shining Dhaka hundreds of years ago!

This decade-old Cafe is situated at 28 North Brook Hall Road at Banglabazar. Locales say that famous personalities such as poet Jasimuddin and Shamsur Rahman and many others used to visit this restaurant.

Cafe Corner was started by Radharaman Ghosh and Haripada Ghosh in 1962. They handed over the cafe corner to one Solaiman Mallick before moving to Kolkata (Calcutta, then), according to erstwhile manager Aboney Sengupta.

Cafe Corner is always full of foodies. You have to wait a while to sit and enjoy your dish. This place deserves your time. The scenario of the cafe stays the same from breakfast to dinner.

The reason behind the extra crowd is the café’s small seating arrangement. At a time only 25 people can sit here. It has been almost 59 years that their interior has not changed!

But the most attractive fact about the cafe is that there are regular customers who do not bother about it. If you cannot sit, there is an arrangement to take the food home.

There are a number of purchasers who have been flocking to this restaurant for ages. One such gentleman is Hashem Sufi, a researcher at the Dhaka History Research Center. He has been visiting this restaurant regularly since 1985. A group of their 5 regularly hang out in this restaurant every Friday afternoon.

Hashem Sufi said, the special and most popular food of Cafe Corner is mutton cram chaap (steak), which is made of minced meat and other secret spices.

This food came to Bangladesh from British kitchen when they ruled this sub-continent. Gradually Bengali Christian people adopted this culinary legacy. The last Bengali Christian chef who used to make mutton cram chaap was John and Joseph.

Back then the price of a mutton cram chaap was "one and a half taka." Currently, it is worth Tk 150.

The staff of Cafe Corner said they use 6 to 8 kilograms of mutton mince for mutton cram chap. With this amount of mutton mince they made 95 to 100 pieces of chaaps. The process of making chaap starts from 2 pm. Some 1,000 people go there to enjoy the Café dishes.

However, if you want to eat mutton cram chaap, you have to go between 4 pm to 6 pm. Otherwise, you may miss it.

Though mutton chaap is the star-dish of this cafe but you also do not want to miss their shrimp fry. It is evolving as their next generation’s mouthwatering dish.

This dish is prepared by crushing shrimp, spices and bread cram. The price of shrimp fry depends on the size of the shrimp. Moreover, potato chops (mash potato fry), chicken fries, moghlai parata and cutlet are very popular, too.

Here you can have breakfast for just Tk 15. You will get pulses and curry for Tk 15, mutton curry for Tk 80 and omelette for Tk 15 taka extra. You can also have chicken (Murg Polao) polao for dinner for Tk 110.