What to Eat in Bhubaneswar Today?

The everyday plate

A proper Odia lunch is rice with dalma, a lentil cooked with vegetables such as raw banana, pumpkin and yam, finished with cumin and roasted spices. Around it come fries, a mashed vegetable called bharta, a sour tomato or mango chutney and, if you eat fish, a curry. Ask for an Odia thali and you will see most of these at once. Many temple-linked kitchens cook without onion or garlic, so do not be surprised if a dish tastes cleaner than its north Indian cousin.

Pakhala in the heat

Pakhala bhata is cooked rice left to soak in water, sometimes overnight so it ferments a little, then eaten with fried fish, badi (sun-dried lentil dumplings), roasted vegetables and green chilli. It is cooling and filling, and locals swear by it from March onwards. Odisha even marks Pakhala Dibasa, usually on 20 March. Dalma in Nayapalli and Odisha Hotel in the Old Town both serve it.

Fish in mustard

Macha besara is fish cooked in a paste of mustard seed and garlic, sharp and a little bitter in a good way. Rohu and other river fish are common in the capital. Odisha Hotel does a plain, honest version; Kanika at the Mayfair in Jaydev Vihar serves a more polished one.

The sweets

Chhena poda is fresh cottage cheese baked with sugar until the outside caramelises and smells faintly smoky. Rasabali is flattened, fried chhena soaked in thickened cardamom milk, first made as an offering in Kendrapara. Truptee in Saheed Nagar sells both, and roadside stalls on the highway south of the city sell chhena poda by weight.

How to order

Eat your main meal at lunch, when thalis are freshest. Ask whether the fish is from the river or the sea. If you are vegetarian, Truptee is fully veg; the others serve both, and the where to eat page shows which kitchen is known for what.