Food and tea in Sylhet: what to eat and drink

Satkora beef, akhni, haor fish, hidol, chunga pitha and layered tea: what to eat and drink in Sylhet, by season, with safety tips and the UK curry link.

Sylheti food tastes of its landscape. The haors supply fish, the hills give citrus, bamboo and pineapples, the paddy gives sticky binni rice for winter cakes, and the estates supply the tea that goes with every conversation. What sets the cooking apart from the rest of Bangladesh is a liking for sour and bitter notes, fierce chilli and fermented fish, and a handful of dishes you rarely meet elsewhere.

This chapter covers what to try and when, from satkora beef and akhni to hidol, chunga pitha and Sreemangal's layered tea, with notes on where to eat, how to stay well and how Sylheti cooks came to run most of Britain's curry houses. For the estates themselves, see The tea gardens.

What makes Sylheti cooking different

Start with sourness. Sylheti kitchens use citrus that is grown mainly in this corner of the country, above all satkora, whose rind goes into meat, fish and dal; thoikor, another sour fruit, is cooked with fish in a tenga. Then heat: the naga morich, an extremely hot local chilli, is dropped into broths. Then depth: hidol, small fish fermented in sealed earthen pots, gives a pungent base to curries and chutneys.

Rice is the centre of every meal, usually with bhorta (mashes of vegetables, fish or dried fish with mustard oil and chilli), dal, a vegetable and a fish or meat curry. Binni, a sticky rice harvested in the aman season, goes into winter cakes and sweets. Duck curry is a winter favourite with rice cakes, and beef cooked with satkora is the festive dish.

Satkora and the sour fruits

Satkora (Citrus macroptera, hatkora in Sylheti) is the taste of Sylhet. It grows widely here and in Assam's Barak Valley, and in home gardens in Tripura, Mizoram and Meghalaya. The fruit is 6 to 7 cm across, with a thick rind that turns yellow as it ripens; the pulp inside is dry, bitter and sour, so cooks throw it away and use the rind.

The rind, green or ripe, is cut into wedges and simmered with beef, goat or fish until it softens and gives the curry a bitter, fragrant edge that cuts through rich meat. Beef satkora is the festive version. Satkora also goes into dal, the rind is sun-dried to last beyond its season, and satkora pickle is sold in jars.

Other sour notes come from thoikor, cooked with fish in a tenga, and from ada jamir and the region's lemons. If you are trying satkora for the first time, order it with beef, where the bitterness has the most to balance.

To take satkora home, buy the pickle or the dried rind, which travel well, and check your destination's rules before you pack fresh fruit.

Akhni, iftar and sweets

Akhni is Sylhet's festive rice: meat, usually beef, cooked with fragrant kalijira rice, whole spices such as cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and black pepper, and often peas and carrots. It is usually counted a cousin of biryani or pulao, and its method has much in common with Dhaka's tehari. In Sylhet it is a favourite for iftar during Ramadan, for Eid lunch and for family gatherings, and it is now popular in restaurants across the country.

The Sylheti iftar table also carries bakarkhani, a thick spiced flatbread also eaten with tea. Nunor bora, crisp fried cakes of rice flour with onion, ginger and turmeric, are a teatime snack and an Eid favourite. For sweets, look for tusha shinni, a halwa-like sweet of dough with nuts and raisins made for special occasions, and handesh, fried dough sweetened with molasses or sugar, made at festivals such as Eid.

In Ramadan, eat and drink discreetly in daylight. If a family invites you to break the fast with them, accept: it is the best way to taste akhni as Sylhetis make it at home.

Fish of the haors, dried and fermented

In the monsoon the haors of Sunamganj, Habiganj, Moulvibazar and Sylhet spread into vast sheets of water, and fish is the region's everyday protein. A 2014 study recorded 154 fish species in Sunamganj's waters and found 54 of them under threat, among them the big ayir catfish, the gozar snakehead, mohashol, pabda and banshpata. On a haor boat trip or at a ghat-side eatery, expect fish curry, fried fish and fish bhorta with rice. Since August 2026 houseboats and tourist boats have been banned from the Ecologically Critical Area of Tanguar Haor until further notice, so check the current rules before you book a Tanguar Haor houseboat trip.

Shutki, or hutki

Shutki, dried fish, is called hutki by many Sylhetis. As the water falls in the dry season, fish is laid on mats or hung on racks to dry in the sun for two to eight days, depending on size and species. Ibrahimpur in Sunamganj is one of the inland drying centres, and puti and chapila are among the freshwater fish most often dried. Banglapedia notes that some traders treat drying fish with insecticides to keep insects away, so buy from sellers you trust and make sure dried fish is washed and well cooked.

Hidol

Hidol, the Sylheti name for shidol, is Sylhet's great fermented food, made much like the chepa shutki of Mymensingh and Kishoreganj. Small puti are sun-dried, packed hard into an earthen pot, sealed and left for several months to ferment; Banglapedia gives three to four months for chepa, which then keeps for about a year. The smell is strong and the taste deep and savoury. It goes into chutneys and fiery bhortas, and traditionally into hutki shira, a broth-like curry of fermented or dried fish with seasonal vegetables such as potato, aubergine and greens.

If the smell puts you off, try a small spoonful of hidol bhorta with plenty of rice before you decide. Ask for kom jhal, less chilli, if you are not used to the heat.

Tanguar HaorA Ramsar wetland below the Meghalaya hills, with swamp trees, island villages and winter waterbirds.Hakaluki HaorThe largest haor in Bangladesh by Banglapedia’s account, an inland sea in the rains and a bird refuge in winter.

Bamboo, chunga pitha and winter cakes

Bamboo feeds Sylhet in two ways. Young shoots are cooked as a vegetable, most famously in aash bash, duck with bamboo shoots. And tubes of dhalu (Schizostachyum dullooa), a thin hill bamboo, are the cooking pots for chunga pitha, the region's best-known winter cake.

To make it, a length of dhalu is cut just below a node, lined with banana leaf, filled with soaked binni rice and plugged with straw. The tubes are laid across two banana trunks over a pit and roasted in burning straw for 40 to 50 minutes; the bamboo does not burn through but releases moisture that steams the rice. Split open, the cake slides out like a candle. Some households mix in milk, sugar, coconut and rice flour.

Chunga pitha is eaten with fried fish or a lightly spiced fish curry at the early-winter fish harvest, or with meat curry, bhorta, milk, coconut or rice pudding, and serving it to guests and to a new son-in-law was once a point of honour. Dhalu once grew in the hills of Moulvibazar, from the Patharia hills of Barlekha and Lathitila in Juri to Rajnagar and Kamalganj, but illegal hill cutting and forest loss have made it scarce and dear, and only a little now reaches the markets, around Poush Sankranti in mid-January.

Other winter cakes are simpler. Choi pitha, called mera pitha in other districts, is a steamed rice-flour dumpling eaten in Sylhet with duck curry, beef curry or bhorta; older pieces are diced and fried with egg and green chilli.

Your best chance of tasting chunga pitha is in a village home in Moulvibazar or in Sylhet's border upazilas in December and January, or at a winter pitha fair. Ask your host or guide.

Manipuri and Khasi kitchens

Manipuri families in Kamalganj, Sreemangal and Sylhet City cook in the tradition of Manipur: rice at every meal, fish from home ponds, seasonal greens and herbs, and little oil. Ngari, fermented fish, is the base. Eromba mashes boiled vegetables with plenty of chilli, often with ngari; singju is a sharp salad of finely cut raw vegetables and herbs; kangshoi is a light vegetable stew; and chak-hao kheer is a pudding of black rice.

Khasi families live on rice and fish, and many grow and sell betel leaf; around Jaflong and in the Moulvibazar hills you see Khasi betel leaf in the markets. Paan, the leaf wrapped round areca nut, is chewed all over Bangladesh.

Meals in Manipuri villages and Khasi punjis are cooked in homes, not sold, so do not expect to buy one unless it is offered. If a family feeds you, a gift of fruit or sweets from the bazaar is a good way to say thank you.

Tea: how Sylhet drinks it

Tea built modern Sylhet. Malnichhara, on the edge of Sylhet City, is usually dated to 1854 and began commercial production in 1857, the first commercial estate in what is now Bangladesh. Of the country's roughly 170 estates, 91 are in Moulvibazar, 25 in Habiganj and 19 in Sylhet, as reported in 2024, and national output reached a record 102.92 million kg in 2023.

Bangladesh had about 345,000 roadside tea stalls in 2021, and in Sylhet, as everywhere, the stall is where people meet. Tea is brewed in a blackened kettle over a fire and usually served sweet with condensed milk, or plain as liquor tea. It is offered to guests as a matter of hospitality in homes, shops and offices, and accepting a cup is polite.

Most of what the estates make is CTC black tea, the granular kind that brews strong and dark for milk tea, but green, oolong, white and organic teas are now produced too. The Bangladesh Tea Research Institute, set up at Sreemangal on 28 February 1957 as the Pakistan Tea Research Station and renamed in 1973, has bred high-yielding clones named BT1, BT2 and onwards.

The layered tea of Sreemangal

Sreemangal's famous drink is layered tea, sold as sat rong cha, seven-colour tea. Most accounts, including The Daily Star's, credit Romesh Ram Gour, who came to Sreemangal from Muktagachha in Mymensingh in 2000. He began in 2003 with two layers, reached five by 2006 and seven by 2009 at his Nilkantha Tea Cabin, which moved in 2004 from Kakiabazar to Ramnagar Manipuri Para near the town. Another Sreemangal vendor, who later took the drink to Dhaka, told Arab News in 2019 that he had invented the seven-colour version, so the credit is disputed.

The layers stay apart because each is made differently, from several kinds of tea, including green tea, brewed at different temperatures with milk, sugar and spices; the makers keep the exact method secret. Romesh was already working towards ten layers in 2009, and by 2019 versions were on sale well beyond Sreemangal, including in Dhaka. Sip it layer by layer from the top, or stir it into one sweet, spiced cup.

Pair a glass of layered tea with a walk through the estates; see Sreemangal tea gardens and Sreemangal weekend.

Fruit through the seasons

The hills of Moulvibazar grow much of the region's fruit. Pineapple, mostly the Honey Queen variety, is harvested in Moulvibazar from May into June; in 2021 four fruits cost around Tk 400 in Sreemangal's market, though prices move with size and season. Oranges come from hill gardens in Juri and Barlekha, with picking from about mid-October.

Lemons are Sreemangal's other crop: in 2017 Moulvibazar district grew about 17,875 tonnes, three-quarters of them in Sreemangal upazila, and growers bring their lemons to local markets such as Jamburachhara. Summer also brings jackfruit, the national fruit, to every bazaar.

• Around May: the lemon harvest in Sreemangal.
• May to June: pineapples from the Moulvibazar hills, and jackfruit.
• Mid-October onwards: oranges from Juri and Barlekha.
• December and January: chunga pitha, choi pitha and duck curry.
• Ramadan, whose dates move each year: akhni and bakarkhani.

Where to eat, street food and staying well

Sylhet City has the widest choice: rice-and-curry restaurants that lay out bhortas, fish and meat curries together, akhni and biryani houses, and sweet shops. In Sreemangal, town restaurants serve Bengali meals, tea cabins serve layered tea and resorts outside town cook to order. In Sunamganj and on the haors, meals revolve around fish, and at Jaflong, Jaintiapur and the other border sights simple eateries near the ghats serve rice, dal, eggs and fish. On the Dhaka–Sylhet highway, large roadside restaurants cater to bus passengers.

Street food here is the same as across Bangladesh: singara, samosa and piyaju fried in front of you, chotpoti and fuchka in the evening, jhalmuri in paper cones and tea at every corner. Busy stalls with quick turnover and food fried fresh while you wait are a safer choice; cut fruit, raw salads and the tamarind water served with fuchka carry more risk.

Drink bottled water with an unbroken seal, or water that has been boiled or properly filtered, avoid ice unless you know where it came from, and peel fruit yourself. Ask a travel clinic or an official service such as the UK's TravelHealthPro about vaccines before you travel. Dengue is a risk in Bangladesh, so avoid mosquito bites, especially by day. On haor and river trips, carry more water than you think you need, and keep oral rehydration salts in your bag.

Many bhortas are made with raw mustard oil, green chilli and onion and can be very hot; ask for kom jhal if you prefer milder food. Hotels by area are listed under Stays, and health and money advice is in Practical information.

From Sylhet to the British curry house

Most of Britain's Indian restaurants are run by Bangladeshis, and most of those were opened by Sylhetis. The story starts with the lascars: by 1873 Sylheti men were working as lascars on British ships and as cooks in London, and some who settled turned fish-and-chip shops into full-service restaurants. In 1946 there were about 20 such restaurants in Britain; by 2015, 8,200 of the country's 9,500 Indian restaurants were Bangladeshi-owned, and a 2019 BBC estimate put the share at about 87 per cent.

The curry-house menu they built was shaped for British diners rather than drawn from Sylheti home cooking, which is why hidol and most village dishes rarely appear beside the korma. Estimates from the 2010s put the curry trade at more than 150,000 jobs and about £4.5 billion a year, and Brick Lane in East London alone had 57 Bangladeshi-owned curry houses in 2016.

Money earned in Britain in turn funded a building boom in Sylhet's villages, a story told in People and culture. For a visitor who knows Sylheti cooking only from the high street, the food here comes as a surprise: sourer, more bitter and much heavier on fish.