Does Barrackpore really serve the best biryani?
Mint Lounge is your guide to an intelligent lifestyle.
As a sometimes enthusiastic student of history in school, I’d often wonder what happened to those places so central to Empire—Masulipatnam, Plassey, Balasore, Barrackpore—and why they weren’t easily found in newspaper headlines of the day. So, when the pitch for this week’s story landed in my inbox, it seemed to be an answer to that old question. Zico Ghosh has gone on the kind of zany quest we love at Lounge to find out why Barrackpore biryani is so stupendously popular in Bengal, and how one mom-and-pop shop, Dada Boudi, gained the cult following it has. People travel hours to reach Barrackpore, stand for many hours in queues to eat this biryani, and then spend even more hours dissecting each bite to decide why it is—or isn’t—the best.
One shop has spawned a host of imitators, drawn Kolkata’s chains down here, and turned the one-time cantonment town into Bengal’s hottest biryani destination. Ghosh traces all this with curiosity and humour—spending hours in kitchens, going meat shopping with the founder, talking to historians and chefs to understand the cultural and historical context of biryani, and explaining the intense competition. With its origins in the 1900s, Dada Boudi’s journey is intertwined with that of Barrackpore’s growth, making this a story as much one of food and culture as of migration and assimilation.
As much as I enjoyed the story, I can’t honestly say Barrackpore is on my bucket list, though I do know I’ll be ordering biryani this weekend—but that’s after I urge you to read the all the stories we’ve done during the week gone by.
The unnecessary Americanisation of football
At the 2026 World Cup, FIFA has introduced mandatory hydration breaks, around the 22nd minute of each half—which breaks up the rhythm and flow of the beautiful game. The World Cup is experiencing an ‘Americanisation’ of football, with multiple hydration breaks and halftime player interviews, all aimed at maximising revenue from advertisers, writes Deepti Patwardhan. It is a concept borrowed from American Made-for-TV sports leagues, where a 48-minute basketball game typically takes over two hours to finish because of stoppages in play. Read more.
The rise of 50-plus fashion mentors
Mothers, grandmothers, wives, professionals and retirees, they are using social media to not sell anti-ageing fantasies or promises of looking younger. Instead, they are offering a vision of growing older by staying true to themselves. In the process, many have found an audience and increasingly, brand partnerships, writes Pooja Singh. Read more.
Why we cannot stop being feminists
Nostalgia is all the rage, and everything retro is in again. But, as Gita Aravamudan writes, the good old days are not always what they are made out to be. In the 1960s-70s, early feminists had to learn to deal with all-pervasive misogyny. Those were the days when most jobs were closed to women, when pregnant women were sacked, and when the few offices that did hire women were unaware that they might need toilets.
Today, some young women hesitate to say they are “feminists”, preferring terms like “pro-women” or “humanist”, but they are unaware that other women fought for the rights they now take for granted. Yet, the battle for equality is far from won as Indian women face a new kind of backlash. Read more.
WEEKEND RECOMMENDATIONS
What to Watch | Where to Go | What to Eat
On Wednesday, you might think you want to do nothing but relax during the weekend. But come Friday, time stretches out before you and you wish you’d made plans. Take your pick from our list of special Sunday brunches, and cocktail and beer tasting experiences to celebrate Fathers' Day, or head to an art gallery to see Atul Kasbekar’s exhibition of photos, textile art or the best of contemporary Indian artists. And if you’d rather stay home, pick from our selection of shows and films.
‘Disclosure Day’: A muddled drama
When his compatriots were making paranoid thrillers in the 1970s, Steven Spielberg was busy perfecting a different kind of film, one so successful it hastened the end of the New American Cinema, writes Uday Bhatia. His new film, Disclosure Day, starring Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor, is a kind of paranoid thriller, yet it lacks the dread and the shadowy possibilities of the best ones. It taps into a quintessential American worry, one that’s shadowed the public consciousness since Watergate, that there are matters of great import that are being deliberately suppressed but ends up being a muddled whistleblower drama and extraterrestrial story. Read more.
The best games from Computex 2026
This year, Computex, one of the world’s biggest tech trade shows held in Taipei, welcomed some of its largest audiences ever, and Asus, which is headquartered in Taiwan, went all out to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Republic of Gamers (ROG).
The company unveiled several products including a homage to its very first motherboard back in 2006. Asus’ core pitch to gamers was simple: Become obsessed with performance, and help fine-tune the hardware for the fastest clock speeds and the smoothest frame rates. Sahil Bhalla picks his favourites from the latest gaming devices showcased at the fair. Read more.
Get the most out of your exercise bike
While treadmills, rowing machines and ellipticals will always be popular, it is the cycle that can be the most useful of all gym equipment. An exercise bike keeps cardio workouts interesting and allows for active rest.
Spinning (or cycling) gives the leg muscles a decent enough workout without the high risk of injuries, and making the exercise bike a part of your routine is a good decision, writes Pulasta Dhar, while explaining how to maximise its benefits as well as have fun. Read more.
Shalini Umachandran is Editor, Mint Lounge.