Bangladeshi food is easy to miss, its dishes often hidden in Indian restaurants, even as many of them are owned or run by Bangladeshis.
Masala Kitchen and Bazaar, a sprawling market which is owned by a Bangladeshi couple and features Bangladeshi food on Thursdays, is itself very easy to miss—tucked into a 10,000-square-foot former warehouse along a Columbia side avenue. But it’s worth seeking out, not only for its rows of grocery items, fresh produce, and halal meats, but for the buffet of excellent dishes that emerge from its kitchen.
Azad and Mona Shah opened Masala over a decade ago, stocking their shelves with regional pantry items, aisles of frozen foods, fresh fruits and vegetables, and a butcher’s section featuring hard-to-find halal meats such as whole sides of goat.
There’s a massive kitchen in the back, with a London-made tandoori oven where the two cooks—one Punjabi, one Bangladeshi—bake excellent, made-to-order naan the traditional way. Vats of curry bubble on the stoves near the oven, and a walk-in refrigerator the size of a loading dock runs the length of one wall.
The kitchen turns out dishes that load the buffet: hotel pans of biryani, chicken tikka masala, pakora, madrashi chicken, goat curry, dal tadka, butter chicken, beef curry, and more. On Thursdays in particular, there are more Bangladeshi dishes, including a terrific fish curry in the form of rohu (a kind of carp) painted dark yellow by turmeric, then fried, and bathed in a blissful curry sauce.
“More flavors. More spices,” Azad Shah said, when asked to explain the difference between Bangladeshi and Indian cuisines.
Bangladeshi food also tends to favor fish and more meats than the vegetarian-focused dishes of many parts of India. It also leans more toward rice than bread, as well as more spices—but these are huge, incredibly diverse countries and rough explanations tend to be overly generalized.
Masala’s curries are flavorful as they come, but the spice quotient was upped when Shah brought over a little plate of fresh and fried chiles, lime slices, fresh ginger, slivers of red onions, and a vibrant gooseberry sauce to add to the meal.
“Now you’re eating like a Bangladeshi,” he said, noting that he sells jars of the gooseberry jam, but tweaks the recipe himself before serving it.
Masala’s buffet is either all-you-can-eat or take-away, and comes with either rice or naan. If you choose the latter, expect hot, crispy, chewy breads with holes made from the long fork that’s used to lift them from the tandoor oven’s circular wall. As the biryani is excellent—flavored with fresh bay leaves and myriad spices—I’d opt for the truly stellar naan. There’s also a condiment tray, with raita, tamarind and cilantro sauces, so you can bathe your lunch with even more flavors.
If you choose to go AYCE—and you should—you’ll be ushered into a massive back room that’s outfitted rather like a hotel conference room, with long banquet tables, chairs, and a sectional. You’ll trek through the market to load up on more fish, curry, and dal, and that enables you to browse the aisles filled with English chocolate, tubs of ghee, spices, cookware, and 20-lb. bags of basmati.
The Shahs, who came to Maryland from Bangladesh 35 years ago, cater a lot of weddings and other events. The range of items loading all those shelves showcase the options available not only to them, but to anyone else in need, from jalabi kits (with squeeze bottles!) to miniature jars of Nutella to your very own side of fresh goat to the crates of gorgeous mangoes near the door on a recent Thursday.
Though Masala is open every day, Thursdays are the days when you’ll find Bangladeshi dishes. Also, the best time to go is shortly after the place opens, at 11 a.m., as the food is just out of the kitchen.
And keep in mind that the first time you go, you’ll need to search the place out. Once you’ve found Red Branch Road, just look for the sign that says “God’s Remnant Assembly”—which reminds me of my all-time favorite Peter Cook skit—and turn east into the driveway.
Load up on mangoes, then settle in for a very long, curry-focused lunch.