Bangladeshi Food in London

Published 28 September 2026 · By the Guide to London editorial team · Editor: Terje Moy

Most of Britain's "Indian" restaurants were opened by Bangladeshi families, nearly all of them from one region, Sylhet - and the food they cook for British customers is almost nothing like what they eat at home. Bangladeshi home cooking is fish-led, sharp, thin-sauced and mustard-oiled. You can eat it in Whitechapel and on Brick Lane for £8 to £14 a dish, in about six places.

Our guide to Brick Lane and the British curry house tells the story of how the trade was built and how to pick a restaurant on that street without being sold a doorway discount. This page is the other half: the dishes that never made it onto a curry-house menu, why they did not, and the addresses where they are cooked now.

The short version of the difference: a curry house thickens, sweetens and reddens. A Bangladeshi kitchen does the opposite. The sauce is thin, the sourness comes from citrus or tamarind, the oil is mustard oil, and the centre of the plate is fish, not chicken.

Why Sylhet, and why it matters to what is on the plate

Nearly the whole of Britain's Bangladeshi population traces back to one district in the north-east of the country. That is unusual: most migrations spread across a whole nation, this one came from a corner of it. Sylheti cooking has its own vocabulary, its own citrus and a heavy use of dried fish, and because the restaurant trade was built by Sylhetis, the things they left off the menu are as revealing as what they put on it.

They left off the dried fish, because it smells; the mustard oil, because it is pungent; the bones, because British customers dislike them; and the bitterness, because it does not sell. What went on instead was boneless chicken, thickened sauce and a heat scale. The result is a national cuisine hidden behind its own restaurants.

The dishes to order

Bhorta. Start here. Vegetables, fish or lentils boiled or roasted, then mashed by hand with raw mustard oil, green chilli, onion and salt. Aubergine (begun bhorta), potato, tomato, dried fish (shutki bhorta) and sometimes plain red lentil. Served as a set of small mounds around rice, and it is the single most characteristic thing on a Bangladeshi table. Sharp, oily, chilli-hot, eaten in tiny quantities with a lot of rice.

Shatkora beef or lamb. Shatkora is a knobbly bitter citrus grown in Sylhet, sliced with the peel on and cooked into a meat curry. It tastes of grapefruit pith and it cuts the fat. If a menu offers it, order it: it exists almost nowhere else in British restaurants.

Fish. Ilish (hilsa) is the national fish and the most prized - oily, intensely flavoured and full of fine bones, usually cooked in a mustard sauce (shorshe ilish) or fried. Rui (rohu), boal, pabda, koi and chital appear on boards depending on what has arrived. Fish curry here is thin and sour, not creamy.

Bhuna khichuri. Rice and lentils cooked together with whole spices until the grains stay separate, usually eaten with beef or with fried egg and a bhorta. Monsoon food, and the best thing to order on a wet London evening.

Morog polao and kacchi biryani. The festive rice dishes: chicken or mutton layered with fragrant rice, cooked sealed. Kacchi biryani in the Dhaka style uses raw marinated mutton put straight in with the rice.

Panch phoron. The five-spice mix - fenugreek, nigella, cumin, black mustard and fennel - used whole, bloomed in oil at the start of a vegetable dish. If you can taste fenugreek's bitterness and nigella's onion note, that is what you are tasting.

Borhani to drink: yoghurt thinned with water, salted, and spiced with mustard, mint and green chilli. It is savoury, not sweet, and it goes with biryani the way a lassi does not.

Where to eat it, with the ratings

The two places at the southern end of Brick Lane are the ones to try first, and they are a different proposition from the restaurants further up the same street: small rooms, canteen furniture, a hot counter with trays, and no doorman. You look at what is in the trays and point. Both were rated 4 or 5 at their most recent inspection.

Kolapata on Whitechapel Road is a sit-down restaurant with a printed Bangladeshi menu rather than a curry-house one, which makes it the easiest place to order deliberately rather than by pointing. It was rated 3 in August 2025, the regulator's "generally satisfactory", and we print that so you can judge.

The two market and fish shops on the list are not restaurants. They are where to see what a Bangladeshi kitchen actually buys: whole river fish on ice, shutki hanging dried, mustard oil in litre bottles, and the citrus by the kilo.

Sweets, and the counter nobody explains

A Bangladeshi sweet shop looks like a jeweller's: a glass counter of small identical objects in syrup, sold by weight. What to ask for:

• Roshmalai - cheese dumplings in sweetened, cardamom-scented thickened milk. Served cold. The best introduction.
• Chomchom - oblong, dense, syrup-soaked, often rolled in coconut. Sylhet's own, and the Porabari version is the famous one.
• Mishti doi - yoghurt set with caramelised sugar in a clay pot. Not very sweet, and the thing to buy if you only buy one.
• Pitha - the winter rice cakes, steamed or fried, filled with date-palm jaggery. Seasonal, so ask.

Buy 200 grams, not a box. These are eaten one or two at a time with tea, and a full box will defeat you. The Hanbury Street shop was rated 5 in February 2025.

Whitechapel and the streets, in the right order

Whitechapel station is on the Elizabeth line, which has made this the easiest food street in east London to reach: ten minutes from Bond Street. Come out and turn east along Whitechapel Road, where the street market runs on weekdays and the grocers and butchers serve the surrounding estates; our Whitechapel guide covers the area and its history.

Brick Lane is about a quarter of an hour north on foot. The southern end is the restaurant end, the northern end is bagels and vintage clothes, and the Sunday markets are covered in our guide to Old Spitalfields and the Brick Lane markets. If you are here in the evening after one of the Jack the Ripper walking tours, the restaurants fill up from about eight, and the canteens at the southern end will have sold out of the best trays by then. Eat before the walk, not after it.

Shoreditch begins at the north end of the same street and has none of this food, which catches people out.

Ramadan, and the best week of the year to eat here

Through Ramadan the kitchens on Whitechapel Road shut in daylight and open at sunset, and the pavement outside the grocers turns into a stall market of iftar food: jilapi coiled and fried on the spot, piyaju (lentil fritters), beguni (battered aubergine), haleem by the tub, and dates by the box. It runs for about an hour before and two hours after sunset, and it is the most interesting food hour in east London.

Our page on halal food in London covers the certification question and the etiquette. Almost everything on this page is halal; Bangladeshi Hindu cooking exists in London but hardly appears in restaurants.

What it costs, and the drink question

Our estimate from menus and counters read in September 2026: a bhorta £3 to £5 each, a fish dish £9 to £16 depending on the fish, meat curry £8 to £13, rice or khichuri £4 to £7, sweets £2 to £4 each or by weight. Two people eating properly - three small dishes, rice and a drink - should expect £30 to £42 before service, and rather less in the canteens, where a tray with rice and two items can be under £12. Our guide to cheap eats in London puts that in context.

On alcohol: many Bangladeshi restaurants in this area do not serve it, some allow you to bring your own and may charge for opening it, and the canteens serve neither. Ask before you arrive with a bottle. Tea is the default - strong, with condensed milk, and sweet unless you stop them.

For the same region's food cooked the other way, our page on Indian food in London covers the regional map, Pakistani food in London covers the charcoal-grill tradition a few streets west, and Goan and Keralan food covers the two coastal kitchens that are nothing like either.

Frequently asked questions

Is Bangladeshi food the same as Indian food?

No, and it is not the same as the food in Britain's "Indian" restaurants either, most of which were opened by Bangladeshi families from Sylhet. Bangladeshi home cooking is led by river fish, uses raw mustard oil, keeps its sauces thin and sour, and includes mashed vegetable dishes called bhorta that never appear on a curry-house menu.

What is shatkora?

A bitter citrus fruit grown in the Sylhet region, sliced with its peel and cooked into beef or lamb curries. It tastes of grapefruit pith and cuts through fat. It is one of the few flavours that is genuinely specific to Bangladeshi cooking, and if a restaurant offers it, that is a sign the kitchen is cooking for Bangladeshi customers too.

Where can I eat real Bangladeshi food in London?

The southern end of Brick Lane and Whitechapel Road, in about six places: two canteens with hot counters on Brick Lane, a sit-down restaurant with a Bangladeshi menu on Whitechapel Road, a sweet shop on Hanbury Street, and further out in East Ham. All of them were rated 3 or better at their most recent hygiene inspection.

What is bhorta?

Vegetables, lentils or dried fish, cooked and then mashed by hand with raw mustard oil, green chilli, onion and salt, and served in small mounds with rice. Aubergine and potato are the usual ones, dried fish the most pungent. Order two or three between two people; they are condiments as much as dishes.

Do Bangladeshi restaurants in London serve alcohol?

Many do not. Some permit you to bring a bottle, sometimes for a corkage charge, and the hot-counter canteens serve no alcohol at all. Ask when you book or before you sit down. Tea with condensed milk and borhani, a salted spiced yoghurt drink, are the traditional alternatives.

Sources

• Food Standards Agency - food hygiene ratings register, every business named on this page, searched by name and by address (checked September 2026)
• GOV.UK - the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme and what each rating means (checked September 2026)
• Office for National Statistics - Ethnic group, England and Wales, Census 2021 (checked September 2026)
• Transport for London - the Elizabeth line, for journey times to Whitechapel (checked September 2026)