Great traditional food just outside Dhaka
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| Our table at Matir Ghor |
I feel lucky to have visited Dhaka at the end of 2019, just before the global pandemic kicked in. I've counted my blessing more than once over the last couple of years, especially as so many people haven't been able to see loved ones and family for much longer than me. My last visit home was unusually short, in between two busy periods at work, so it meant I actually stayed in Dhaka for once rather than travelling out to other places in the country.
Of course, this wasn't something my parents could bear, so they had to take me out of the city for one road trip at least. Except, we didn't really head that far out of the city - only going partway to a planned new town project to the north-east of Dhaka called Purbachal. Apparently there was a really good fresh produce bazaar by the road on the outskirts of the town they wanted to shop from, as well as a nice traditional restaurant called Matir Ghor they thought I would like. And they were right, because Matir Ghor served up some really delicious traditionally Bangladeshi food. The restaurant is over an hour away from Dhaka, depending on where you're travelling from and what traffic is like on the day. As I was on holiday and my parents are retired (aka permanently on holiday - not as great as it sounds, they're usually bored), we went outside of rush hour on a weekday, making for quite a swift trip to a fairly empty restaurant.
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| The restaurant building, just to the left |
The venue is on a side street just as you turn off from the main road. There wasn't a gate or sign when I visited, just a bright-red clay path winding away from the street into the trees. Follow the path down, and you'll realise you're in the right place when you get to a bit of a clearing with parked cars. The site is a collection of single storey buildings set amidst a nicely overgrown garden. Talking to the staff, we learned that this was the owners' grandparents' home. Apparently the family aren't in residence anymore, but they wanted to preserve the site by turning it into a traditional restaurant. The main restaurant building is indeed made from earth as the name suggests, complete with a tin roof and bamboo supports. The structure has some supporting brickwork, along bright red metal doors and windows.
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| Clay walls, wooden benches and art on sale |
The look continues on the inside, with lanterns hanging form the ceiling, wooden furniture and earthen tableware - everything from the serving dishes to plates and glasses. But the little fans give away that the place does have electricity, despite the lanterns on the ceilings. And despite the old-fashioned look, this is a slick operation - with attentive staff, written menus and art for sale on the walls. A lot of the food is out on display in quirky serving dishes at the end of the room, and I would recommend wandering up to a have a look before ordering.
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| Clockwise from the bottom left: tomato, lau, shutki, haash and murgi |
The whole family loves eating, and so we ordered generously. From the vegetables we had tomato bhorta, lau pata or gourd leaf bhorta and paachmishali or 5-grain mixed daal. From the meat and fish options we had chicken cooked in bamboo, duck bhuna, king prawns with aubergine and shutki or dried fish bhuna. All of the food was delicious and clearly expertly cooked - and refreshingly a far-cry from the overly oily and spicy food served at a lot of Dhaka eateries serve. The ingredients tasted fresh too, and it really did feel like I was having a meal made from ingredients just brought in from the farm a few hours ago. I particularly liked the veggie dishes, as there's nowhere to hide when you're working with delicate flavours. The shutki was also very welcome, as I hadn't had it in quite a while. The bamboo-cooked chicken made it clear the place was potentially serving Chakma food and that the chef was possibly Chakma. And indeed, the spicing in some of food was slightly different to what I'm used to, but I don't know enough about Chakma cuisine to be able to describe exactly what was different. We rounded off the meal with some doi and payesh for dessert, but the former was bought-in and the latter was made with plain sugar - so I wasn't a big fan. However - dessert is not why anyone's coming here!
This is a meal best shared with others, as all the portions are one and a half person's worth of food in my opinion. It's worth noting that this place is an actual restaurant catering to clientele on a day out from Dhaka - rather an a casual roadside eatery - and the prices reflect this. You pay similar to what you could expect from similar places in Dhaka back in 2019, with vegetable dishes around the TK 50 mark, whereas meat and fish dishes cost TK 200 upwards.
Matir Ghor can be a bit tricky to find as it doesn't have a very specific address. I've noted down the restaurant's contact information as usual at the bottom of the review, but for convenience the Google maps location is here. I've decided to stop scoring reviews, and given I visited Matir Ghor a good while ago I'm not sure I could justify scoring it anyway. However, I can certainly say I'm looking forward to visiting next time I'm in Dhaka!
A: Ketun, Dhaka Bypass Road, Kalihonj, Gazipur
T: +8801716883120
W: None
