When we Odias talk about our "maansha-bhaata", the first image that springs to our mind is a soft-focus snap: a tall heap of piping-hot rice, a deep bowl of fiery red mutton curry, and a plate with sliced onions, salted lemon juice, crushed green chillies in it.... we can almost smell the gravy by now.
We fondly recall how spoons and forks would go for a toss that day while we go hunting for that elusive, semi-oval piece of potato found right at the bottom or middle of the molten-lava curry. We would tentatively dig out the piping-hot potato, scoop it up to the rice plate, mash it with some curry, mix it with rice, grinning from ear to ear all the time, and down it with the spiritual satisfaction of a monk.
This idea of using bare hands to have meat steeped in oil, fat and turmeric instead of spoons might be a more fulfilling dining experience but it has a flip side to it as well: you are left with a pair of rather unsightly, yellow and greasy hands, but then- you can't have everything, can you?
Can you?
Seems that if you are dining in this lovely thatched-hut restaurant known as Maati Handi Mutton, the answer is a resounding- YES!
This restaurant derives its name from the earthen (maati) pot (handi) they use as a utensil to cook mutton here. Dining out in this restaurant was my friend's idea of a memorable birthday treat. To my pleasant surprise, we got to enjoy a nice square-meal of rice, some really tender mutton and my favorite- lamb liver. All at a very affordable price.
The food gets ticks in almost all boxes from me- Quality of rice, taste of both the mutton and liver curry, quantity in the servings, the use of minimum spices and very less oil in the gravy, the side-dishes, the works. And no yellow hands, either!
There is some bad news, though- The restaurant is a typical thatched-hut dhaba bang beside the highway and there's no AC. So if you are one of those prim & proper types, steer away. Also, they don't serve any soft drinks here and the quality of drinking water is, at the very least, questionable.
But you have a betel shop nearby that provides bottled mineral water. There's also a beer parlor down the road, in case you are interested in concluding your meal with a "different" kind of bottled beverage.
There are a lot of look-alike restaurants along this road that claim to be the first one to come up with the idea of serving authentic "maati handi" mutton, and truth be told, there's no way to check the veracity of their claims. I have had mutton in quite a few of these but I find one particular restaurant to be consistently good with its preparation:
You will find it to the left of the road if you are traveling from Cuttack towards Bhubaneswar. It's the one immediately next to a sort of big warehouse with "Vodafone" painted in red all over it.
So if you love mutton, just the way half of the population in Odisha does- look no further. Here is the picture of an excellent lunch that I had the chance to enjoy, and in a very comfortable budget bracket as well. You might wanna get hold of a napkin, to help you with the drool ;)
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| Maati Handi Mutton in Bhubaneswar: Worth the hype? Check out the reviews and rating here. |