Parul's Samudrik Ranna

Tejgaon

Parul is from Bandarban, where the Chittagong Hill Tracts meet the coastal plains. Her cooking blends two worlds: the bamboo-shoot and wild-herb traditions of the hill tribes with the coconut-and-fish foundations of coastal Chittagong. It is a combination almost nobody in Dhaka offers. Her signature dish is bamboo-steamed fish — whole tilapia stuffed with lemongrass and hill chilies, wrapped in banana leaves, and steamed inside bamboo tubes over a slow fire. The fish absorbs the fragrance of the bamboo and emerges impossibly tender. Parul moved to Tejgaon five years ago and initially cooked only for her hill-tract community in Dhaka. As word spread, Bengali families started ordering too, curious about flavors they had never encountered. Now her kitchen bridges two cultures, one plate at a time.

Signature dish: Bamboo-Steamed Fish (Bandarban-style)