Owners’ pride: Kolkata’s Trincas

How a century-old Park Street icon became the city’s unlikely LGBTQIA+ haven.

The heavy wooden door to Tavern-Behind-Trincas is just off bustling Park Street. It’s the perfect semi-hidden portal to a world within a world. | Photo Credit: Nishan Das

Anand Puri, a member of the third generation of the family that owns the legendary Trincas restaurant in Kolkata, has a mystery to solve: the rainbow pride flag hanging outside Trincas routinely goes missing. “I don’t think it’s homophobia because nothing is ever defaced,” says Puri. “I think it’s some queer kid.”

Over the last year, Trincas has become a rather unlikely queer haven in Kolkata. Every Thursday night, queer folk (and friends) show up at the Tavern-Behind-Trincas for an evening of raucous karaoke over 2-for-1 cocktails, an addictive salty chanachur (a mixture of spiced and fried ingredients, such as lentils, peanuts, and chickpeas), and shepherd’s pie.

Tavern-Behind-Trincas is the perfect place for weekly catch-ups in a space that is public yet safe and cosy. | Photo Credit: Nishan Das

On one evening one might hear “Chhaiya chhaiya”, Bengali modern, Taylor Swift, even Rabindra Sangeet, and almost always, without fail, “Mamma Mia”. “It’s different from other parties,” says the designer Navonil Das, co-initiator of Kolkata Pride, a platform dedicated to showcasing queer lives, sharing ideas, and highlighting queer sociocultural legacies. “There’s no entry fee and no requirement to buy drinks or food. It’s just for the love of gupshup [chitchat]. Also, Kolkatans break into song very easily. It’s also intimate. People are on top of each other. You can come as strangers, but you always go back making some friends.”

Trincas, located in Park Street, has long been the lodestar of Kolkata’s nightlife. Once it rocked to the sounds of the legends—Usha Uthup, Benny Rosario, Biddu—all singing everything from Janis Joplin to Tom Jones. Their pictures still adorn its walls. If Kolkata is often mocked as the nostalgia capital of India, Park Street is the nostalgia capital of Kolkata. This is where wintering NRIs come for a deviled crab at Mocambo’s, wait in line for a chelo kebab at Peter Cat, drink tea at Flury’s, and lament the long departed Skyroom. Nostalgia can coat Park Street cloyingly like the thick mayonnaise of a prawn cocktail.

The all-important collection box for donations that will be used by Kolkatapride.org for awareness and causes. | Photo Credit: Nishan Das

Until last year, I went to these hallowed establishments only with visiting NRI friends who wanted to relive their childhoods. It all changed when I walked into Tavern for the first queer karaoke night in June 2023. It was like walking into a dimly lit grotto—a neighbourhood beer pub meets a New York speakeasy with an Italian diner’s red-checked tablecloths. The decor is even quirkier. There are heraldic shields on the wall and plaster figurines that look like Joseph, Mary, and Jesus, or the Three Wise Men (if one of them did drag). Even Puri is not sure who they are. He is just petrified that an over-enthusiastic karaoker will bang into them one night. “If the Other Room bar upstairs was modelled on the 1920s’ jazz bars of Paris, the Tavern was a sort of fantastic place that was an escape from reality and came with cheap drinks,” says Puri.

In reality both were part of the laundry space for the main Trincas, now pressed into nightlife duty.

Spicy stories

Trincas is almost a century old. In a way, the Tavern is almost a more wholesome version of the old Trincas cabaret where, in the 1960s, Francis Fraser would do burlesque as Holly White, removing one last strategically placed piece of clothing as the lights went out and the audience gasped. Even its origin story came iced with scandal. The Swiss couple Quinto Cinzio Trinca and his wife Lilly formed a patisserie and tearoom partnership with Joseph Flury and his wife Freida. In 1939, that partnership broke because, gossip says, one half of the Trincas eloped with the other half of the Flurys. That might be pure urban legend, but it makes for a spicy story. Puri’s grandparents and their partner, Ellis Joshua, bought the business in 1959.

Tavern-Behind-Trincas on a Thursday night. | Photo Credit: Nishan Das

Instead of pickling it in nostalgia for the lost swinging Kolkata of the 1960s, Puri is trying to make Trincas “a showpiece for the city today” but without sacrificing the old charm. He has just added new cocktails such as Baganbari and Pushpa, packing a sweet but lethal punch. “And we perfected the Bloody Mary and made sure it came with real celery sticks,” he says. “I would say it’s one of the best in the city.”

Trincas’ queer avatar was more of an experiment. One year, after the Pride Parade in Kolkata, the volunteers had an after-party here. That made Das think there was a need for a regular space for people who did not like loud thumping music at the big late-night parties. “It was supposed to be like an open mic,” says Das. “But it was really lapped up by the community. A lot of women showed up as well.” Since then he has seen young queers come with their mothers, who have their own memories of Trincas. “It’s like old Calcutta meets new Kolkata,” he says.

It was not all smooth. Das remembers Puri almost chickened out before a staff sensitisation workshop, wondering if they were ready to deal with the whole rainbow spectrum. “I told him, at times we just need to take the first step forward without worrying about what the other side will think,” says Das. As they awkwardly tried to explain the LGBTQIA alphabet soup in Hindi and Bengali, Puri remembers the staff shrugged and said: “But they come here all the time and we serve them anyway.”

One of the karaoke nights at the Tavern-Behind-Trincas. | Photo Credit: Nishan Das

The difference now is that they make them feel welcome. That is why, unlike many other establishments that put up the Rainbow Pride flag during Pride, Trincas has never brought it down.

I keep going back to the Tavern-Behind-Trincas, not because I can sing—I cannot hold a tune to save my life—but because it is a place that lets you march to your own music. And that chanachur mix is really addictive.

Sandip Roy is a novelist, podcaster, and columnist currently living in Kolkata. His award-winning debut novel was Don’t Let Him Know.