After three decades of working in pharmaceuticals and the hospitality sector, Banerjee decided to strike it on his own in 2001. “I have always enjoyed cooking. It’s a family skill and everybody from my grandmother to my wife are excellent cooks. That’s why I decided to start afresh with food,” he says, sitting in his Chittaranjan Park pad.

Mother’s Kitchen, as his home delivery service is called, is a thriving venture now with customers ranging from working wives in the neighbourhood to curry-loving families in Noida to bachelors in Gurgaon with a preference for his dhokhar dalna (gravy-based dish made out of Bengal gram) or mochar ghonto (banana inflorescence cooked with dry spices). Quiz master Siddhartha Basu is a loyal client, we are told, with a particular fondness for his Bengali-style mutton curry.

“We call it the Mother’s Kitchen because the food is fresh and done with care, just like a mother would,” he says.

Banerjee has two cooks dishing out the delicacies for him on a regular basis. That apart, he himself chips in with the ladle every day. “I cook one dish every day besides instructing the cooks on the finer points.

Besides I taste every dish before it sent off. If it’s not good, it’s not worth sending out,” he says firmly.

The recipes have been culled from his family kitty, with generous inputs from patrons and food lovers. “We hail from East Bengal (undivided Bengal in pre-Independence times), so our repertoire of recipes is rather vast, but if customers come to us with their own recipes we are open to working under specific instructions,” he says.

Apart from Bengali cuisine, he cooks north Indian foods as well. Banerjee dishes out Kashmiri Qormas and Handi Gosht with as much as elan as he does doi mach (fish in a sweet curd gravy) and aloo posto. Orders need to come in early, with the minimum notice period being an hour-and-a- half.

A four course meal with dal-rice, vegetables, prawns, and mutton will cost just Rs 175 and needs a day’s notice. If it’s a large party— over 50 plates— Banerjee moves beyond CR Park for delivery. Otherwise, he sticks within the 3-km radius and supplies takeaways to his other customers.