Bandhan Caterer

We’ve been doing catering work from our base in Dum Dum for quite a few years. Our spot is near Kazi Para on the Jessore Road. If you know that road, you know the traffic is always a nightmare, so we have to leave really early to get to our events on time. We have a big kitchen area where we do all the prep work, chopping sacks of onions and cleaning fish. It’s a lot of manual labor and we’re usually up before the sun. We have a team of cooks who specialize in different things, and we all just pile into the vans with the big aluminum pots when it’s time to head out. Sometimes we’re working in a tight space at a client’s house, and other times it’s a big open field. We don’t have a fancy office to show people; we usually just talk to them on the phone or meet them at the venue. Our menus are pretty standard Bengali stuff that people expect at a wedding or a birthday. We try to make sure the salt is right and the food is hot when it’s served. It’s a stressful job because you can’t really afford to be late or run out of food. We’ve had some close calls with the vans breaking down in traffic, but we always figure it out. It’s just us trying to make a living by cooking.