Overview
- Signature Dishes: Chingri Malaikari (Jumbo prawn in a creamy sauce)
- Opening Times & Days: 12pm to 10pm, daily
- Address: Ekdalia Road, Gariahat, Kolkata, West Bengal, India
- Contact: 033 2440 1933
- Reservation: Yes
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Summary
Bhojohori Manna Kolkata is one of the best places in southern Kolkata to try traditional Bengali-style food at its best. Aimed at the budget traveller, this restaurant is one of Kolkata’s best respected chains for genuine if pre-prepared Bengali food and is, therefore, visited by locals and tourists alike. Try their Ekdalia branch for some excellent Bengali specialties.
Bhojohori Manna Kolkata
Bhojohori Manna Kolkata is one of the best places in the city to try traditional Bengali-style food at its best. Aimed at the budget traveller, this restaurant is one of Kolkata’s best respected chains for genuine if pre-prepared Bengali food and is visited by locals and tourists alike.
This is a chain of restaurants in the Gariahat area of southern Kolkata; there are three branches at Ekdalia, Hindustan Road and near KC Das Road. We decided to try the original Ekdalia branch for dinner one evening.
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The Ekdalia restaurant is tiny inside with only three tables so it’s quite easy to fill up quickly. If it’s house full, they also do take-away which is very popular with the locals.
The decor is simple inside with a few cartoon sketches on the walls by celebrated Bengali film director Satyajit Ray.
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As you walk into the restaurant, you can see right into the kitchen. Thankfully, the kitchen is clean and the workers wear protective coverings over their head and hands. Most of the food is pre-prepared so the kitchen is clean and sterile. You can see the pre-prepared dishes neatly sitting on the bench waiting to be ordered by the customers that frequent this place.
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The restaurant is taken over by a large white menu board upon which a long list of Bengali dishes are scribbled. Not all the dishes are available everyday so they mark the ones that are available on the day with a tick mark in front of the dish name.
From what was available on the day, we ordered Chingri Malaikari, Chicken Dakbangla & Shukto with Chapattis.
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Chingri Malaikari is a very popular Bengali dish and a specialty dish of this restaurant. This dish is made from jumbo prawns cooked in a spiced creamy sauce and tempered with grated coconut. We ordered one serving of this dish and received a beautiful glass plate with a prawn that was almost the size of a lobster. The jumbo prawn was still shelled so we had to remove the head and the shells. It is a Bengali tradition to eat the head as well but we couldn’t get ourselves to do that.
The jumbo prawn had a firm texture yet it was soft and moist and went really well with the creamy sauce. The sauce wasn’t spicy but had a lot of flavour as well as an interesting texture. I particularly enjoyed this dish and would recommend it to anyone who likes seafood particularly prawns.
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Chicken Dakbangla (also known as Chicken Dak Bungalow) is a dish that was created by a gifted khansami (royal cook) to please his British Lord while on his travels. The original recipe was a roast and not a curry like it is these days. The original purpose was to serve something light on spices which could be cooked with minimal ingredients in the shortest amount of time. The version of the Chicken Dakbangla which gained popularity in Kolkata was a much spicier curry with more gravy and one cooked purely with mustard oil. The pure mustard oil is what gives this dish its fantastic flavour and marinating the chicken for 2-3 hours makes it unbelievably tender.
The chicken was cooked on the bone which enhanced the flavour and retained the moisture really well. The spicy curried sauce brought a multitude of different flavours to the palette. Even though there wasn’t a lot of chicken meat, the extra flavour from the bones really enhanced this dish.
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Shukto is a Bengali preparation made from a classic melange of different vegetables cooked with poppy seeds and mustard. A Bengali meal is incomplete without this dish as it forms the basis for every meal; therefore, it is one of the most common dishes in Bengali cuisine. In Bengal, it is one of the first things to be eaten before other dishes on the plate. This dish has a unique flavour; there is something bitter and something sweet in the dish.
The combination of textures from the different vegetables and the spices made for an interesting dish. The vegetables were well cooked and the spices enhanced their flavour rather than overpowering them. This dish went really well with the chappatis.
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We were served eating plates topped with a banana leaf which is the traditional way of eating in Bengali culture. The banana leaf gives extra flavour to the food which can then be thrown away after eating thereby saving on the washing up of plates.
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At the end of our meal, we were give a wash bowl to wash our hands. In Indian culture, it is common to eat with the right hand so the wash bowl is given for people to wash their hands after their meal. Even though we had not eaten with our hands, Graham had used his hands to remove the shells and head from the prawn so it was wonderful to get a bowl of warm water with a slice of lime to freshen up the hands.
After dining at Bhojohori Manna Kolkata, we can see why this restaurant is so popular with the locals. They have delicious Bengali food at reasonable prices; the portions are a bit small though. If you’re in the Gariahat area in southern Kolkata, drop by the Ekdalia branch of Bhojohori Manna Kolkata for some lip-smacking traditional Bengali food.
