Dhaka's breakfast market is particularly busy on Fridays. Daily Star
Dhaka's breakfast market is particularly busy on Fridays. Daily Star

DHAKA, Bangladesh (Daily Star/ANN) -- The Friday menu, whether for breakfast or lunch, has always been a lavish affair for the people of Dhaka.

The bowl of cereal or a hard toast is swapped with hot parathas fried in ghee, julienned potatoes fries, spicy omelettes with cheese, and sweet semolina halwa, or perhaps, puffed-up luchis with aloo dum and dim er halwa (potato curry, and an egg dessert).

The most elaborate morning spread might be beef bhuna and thick laal atta roti that is spiced up with onions and chilli (brown flour savoury soft tortilla), and finished off with a hot cup of gur er cha (tea with molasses). Bengali families are spoiled for choices, and a well-planned, sumptuous home-cooked weekend breakfast is undeniably the best.

Then again, it is a Friday morning, and the lady of the house is equally entitled to stay in bed a little longer with her tea. Getting all flustered with cooking is not exactly an ideal option to relax on a Friday morning.

So, if there isn't a rich breakfast at home, then the second-best option is going out for breakfast.

Dhaka has numerous lovely breakfast options. The posh cafes in Dhaka, like White Canary Café, North End Coffee Roasters, and Bistro E offer an elaborate English breakfast menu: sausages, eggs (fried, poached, or scrambled), grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, baked beans, marmalades, and buttered toasts and bread. My most sinful choice for such a breakfast is the soft brioche French toast with a seasonal fruity compote.

But for the Bengali Babu, the quintessential nashta or breakfast is always from a local sweetmeat shop like Bismillah Misti Mukh & Bakery, Bonoful or Muslim Sweets across the road.

The choice includes fresh seasonal vegetables mash or labra, tempered with dry chilli, fenugreek, cumin, mustard seed in mustard oil, and infused with an earthy depth of hing (asafoetida), served with hot paratha and roshogolla.

An alternative to this menu is the chunky vegetable stew with pea lentils cooked in clarified butter or ghee, and soft omelettes with lots of onions, green chilli, and mint, and a glass of chilled matha, a popular Bangladeshi yogurt-based drink.

The deep-fried luchi, mixed vegetable bhaji, and bhundia, a fun dessert of fried chickpea flour bubbles dipped in sugar syrup from the legendary Medina Mishtanna Bhandar in Lalbagh, have always been a crowd pleaser. This menu has been going strong for the last 50 years.

Sweetmeat breakfast has put Deshbandhu Sweetmeat, Alauddin Sweetmeat, and Medina Mishtanna Bhandar in the spotlight.

One might add that from times gone by up until now, old Dhaka has remained a sought-after place for breakfast.

Haji'r biryani in Alauddin Road sees queues from as early as 6 a.m.. Basically, it is a meal of beef tehari cooked in mustard oil, and their parcels are wrapped in a packet of dried jackfruit leaves. This is indeed legendary and even nowadays, it remains so.

Chicken soup, the local version of white sauce broth with chicken pieces, bone marrow stew, or nihari and paya, is a legacy of old town's Mughal settlements, served with soft butter naan and oil-free parathas. These breakfast items are yet to be dethroned from our list of favourite breakfasts aside from a homely one.

However, dunking hot parathas, bakarkhani and toast biscuits in a piping hot cup of sweet milk tea would still be the all-time favourite Friday breakfast for many people.


khnews@heraldcorp.com