I walked into Potbelly at Hauz Khas on a warm monsoon afternoon, hungry after making my way through the Delhi traffic and curious to try authentic Bihari food for the first time. Before I could get to the table, however, it was the artwork on the front wall that caught my attention.
The artwork was in the Sujni style, a traditional form of embroidery and storytelling from Bihar, and here it tells the story of founder and Chef Puja Sahu’s home. She explained, “There is Chhath Puja, household objects and traditional kitchenware — the silauti used to grind wet masalas, the jaanta for dry spices, the khal-mussar and a tulsi plant that, Sahu tells me, has been around for almost 100 years. A jhulla appears too, while the women depicted in the artwork are my mother, grandmother, me and my sisters performing Chhath Puja.” The space offered a sense of place even before the first bite.
That feeling of home is central to Sahu’s understanding of food. Her earliest memories are of watching her mother prepare meals with care, wheat being coarsely ground for traditional Bihari sweets, jars of pickles lined up in the sun, food cooked on mud stoves, litti roasted over dried cow-dung cakes and kebabs slow-cooked over a fire. Much of what the family ate came from their own kitchen garden, while fish was caught from their private ponds. That taught her early on to treat the ingredient as the hero, a philosophy that continues to shape the food at Potbelly.
Her relationship with food was further broadened by her travels with her husband and daughter through San Francisco, Napa and Sonoma. Farmers’ markets, independent eateries and restaurants at different ends of the dining spectrum gave her a closer look at how ingredients could be sourced, treated and presented. Those experiences, she says, deepened her understanding of food not only as something to eat, but as something connected to memory and storytelling.
That idea of storytelling has also been at the heart of Potbelly since its beginnings. When Sahu opened the restaurant, she told us, “Bihari cuisine was still largely unfamiliar to Delhi diners, and I was attempting to introduce a regional food culture that came with its own set of stereotypes. I had to work against perceptions of Bihar that often overshadowed its heritage and culture, while convincing diners to look at its cuisine on its own terms.”
Fourteen years ago Potbelly was among the relatively few restaurants in Delhi celebrating a regional cuisine in this way. The challenge was not simply getting people to try the food, but educating them about what they were eating and where it came from. Over time, she found that consistency and flavour brought people back, but the stories behind the dishes gave them a deeper connection to the experience.
Litti Chokha and Beyond
After 15 years of running the restaurant, Sahu has witnessed a significant change in how Delhi diners approach Bihari food. When she started, litti chokha was often the extent of people’s familiarity with the cuisine. Today, she says, diners increasingly return knowing what they want to eat and are more willing to explore dishes they have not encountered before.
As we spoke, Sahu introduced me to a spread that offered a glimpse into that breadth: fish chokha on marua roti, keema goli, masala jhinga with parwal chokha and tomato chokha.
Chokha is a rustic, smoky and spiced mash, usually made with fire-roasted or boiled vegetables and seasoned with ingredients such as mustard oil, chillies and onions. It is one of those preparations that can appear simple on the plate but has plenty going on in the bowl.
I started with the fish chokha on marua roti. The first bite brought the warm, pungent flavour of mustard together with mashed fish and onions, waking up my palate immediately. The keema goli, made with mutton keema shaped into small balls, was more restrained. Here, the meat took centre stage, with the spices being of a milder note. The masala jhinga, on the other hand, turned up the heat. The prawns had a slight crispness to them, which worked particularly well against the more intensely spiced masala.
There was a sense that I was moving through dishes that had very different personalities, rather than simply sampling variations of the same cuisine. That, perhaps, is one of the more interesting things about Bihari food today: the opportunity to look beyond the dishes that have become shorthand for the cuisine.
For Sahu, “making that repertoire accessible does not mean stripping it of its character. People naturally gravitate towards bold flavours, and the strong flavours of Bihari cooking have helped bring diners back. Word of mouth, rather than conventional marketing, has been particularly important for Potbelly.” At the same time, introducing unfamiliar food requires patience — from training the restaurant team to explaining the stories behind individual dishes and making sure the food remains approachable without losing its identity.
That was what I tried next. Baggia are pockets of rice flour stuffed with spiced dal, traditionally boiled and eaten with chutney. At Potbelly, they came with tomato chokha and coriander chutney. In texture, the baggia reminded me of a chewier version of an idli, but the filling of spiced dal gave it another layer of flavour. The tomato chokha brought together the sweetness and acidity of mashed tomatoes with the freshness of green chutney, making the otherwise understated baggia much more pronounced.
Baggia is also one of the dishes that carries a particular memory for Sahu. She remembers it as something that was traditionally boiled at home and eaten with chutney, part of a repertoire in which everyday dishes were closely tied to the rhythms of family life. It is this relationship between food and memory that she tries to retain even when dishes move from the home kitchen to a restaurant.
How A Dish Changes In A Restaurant
As we continued talking, our conversation moved towards how dishes that are deeply rooted in home kitchens change when they enter a restaurant. Sahu is careful to distinguish between adapting a dish and losing its identity.
“Litti chokha is one example. Traditionally, the litti would be roasted over dried cow-dung cakes before being dipped in ghee. In households where ghee was not always available in abundance, this was naturally more limited. At the restaurant, ghee also has a practical purpose: it keeps the litti moist and prevents it from becoming too dry.”
The litti was a traditional rustic preparation with a whole-wheat flour outer shell and a filling of roasted, spiced gram flour known as sattu. And, yes, the ghee was distinctive. It gave the litti a richness and character without making it feel heavy.
There are similar adjustments in the restaurant’s sarson machhli. At home, Sahu recalls, it was traditionally prepared with rohu with bones. At Potbelly, she uses boneless bhetki instead. The flavour profile remains close to the original, but the change makes the dish more practical for a restaurant setting.
These adaptations are part of Sahu’s larger approach to cooking. At Potbelly, ingredients are treated as the starting point, with wood-pressed mustard oil used across the kitchen and staples such as sattu and makhana sourced directly from Bihar. She is particular about the quality and provenance of the ingredients, believing that authenticity begins with what goes into the dish rather than simply how it is presented.
Slow Food, Deep Flavours
The two meat dishes on the menu offered another look at the breadth of Bihari cooking. The khada masala chicken gets its character from whole spices rather than an overwhelming quantity of powdered masala. As the chicken cooks, the spices gradually release their oils, leaving the dish deeply aromatic and layered without making it aggressively hot. The meat remains central, surrounded by the fragrance and warmth of the spices.
The Champaran mutton was more intense. Also known as ahuna or handi meat, the dish is traditionally slow-cooked in a sealed earthen pot over charcoal or wood fire. The meat cooks in its own juices, while the clay handi lends it a smoky, almost mineral-like earthiness. Eating it slowly allowed those flavours to emerge one after another, first the richness of the meat, then the spice and finally that smokiness from the earthen pot.
This was food that asked to be savoured rather than hurried through. Listening to Sahu talk about the dishes made that experience feel even more immersive because, for her, cooking is inseparable from memory. “My understanding of regional food is rooted in the belief that recipes are records of people, places and occasions. The dishes I cook draw heavily from childhood memories and from watching my mother and grandmother in the kitchen. Festivals, too, have their own foods, making cooking part of the way families mark time and celebrate together.”
This is what regional food can do at its best: offer an entry point into a culture that diners may know little about. She believes Delhi’s food scene is moving beyond a time when only a handful of regional cuisines received sustained attention. There is now greater curiosity around the food of different states, along with an interest in understanding the traditions behind the dishes.
Bihari cuisine, she says, did not always enjoy the same visibility in Delhi, but the response today has been different. Diners are increasingly interested in discovering unfamiliar flavours and understanding why a dish is prepared in a particular way. The novelty may bring them through the door, but it is the food, and the story attached to it, that can make them return.
By the time I left Potbelly, I had been made privy to the range of flavours that Bihari cuisine can offer. More importantly, I had begun to understand the dishes through the memories and traditions attached to them. In a city where regional food is increasingly moving beyond familiar stereotypes, perhaps the most interesting meals are the ones that give you a reason to ask what lies behind what is on your plate.
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