Broadway Bar

The Broadway Bar is a legendary no-frills drinking den attached to the old Broadway Hotel near Esplanade, little changed in decades. Beneath whirring ceiling fans, marble-topped tables and bright lights host a democratic mix of office workers, students and old-timers over cheap beer and stiff drinks. Utterly without pretension, it is a Kolkata institution and an atmospheric, only-here place to soak up the character of the city over an affordable pint.

The bar occupies the ground floor of the Broadway Hotel at 27A Ganesh Chandra Avenue in Bowbazar, a few minutes from Esplanade. The hotel opened in 1937, more than a decade before independence, and the room has been left alone in a way that is increasingly rare in central Kolkata – high ceilings, slow fans, hard light and marble-topped tables set close together.

There is a kitchen alongside the bar turning out North Indian and Chinese plates, but nobody comes for the food. They come because it is cheap, unhurried and completely without pretension, and because the crowd is genuinely mixed: clerks after work, students, writers, men who have been drinking in the same chair for thirty years.

How to do it right. Go early evening on a weekday, sit downstairs rather than in the newer rooms, order a large bottle of whatever local beer is cold, and stay long enough to watch the room fill. It is not a place for a big group or a late night – it closes earlier than you would expect for a bar.