This story originally appeared on Instagram on 5th may’25
The emergence of home chefs has made regional food more accessible in Mumbai.
I had a Manipuri lunch today from Akhoi.
Akhoi is not a home chef enterprise in the purest sense. It’s run by Lin Laishram who is a Mumbai based actress from Manipur & who is married to actor, Rajdeep Hooda.
Akhoi is her recently launched cloud kitchen which serves Manipuri food. The @akhoimumbai instagram page is quite informative and you should check it out.
I wanted to order in from there for a while & did so today as our cook hadn’t come & I needed lunch. Swiggy didn’t deliver in Bandra but Zomato did.
I chose a pork thali so that I could try out a variety of dishes & ordered a chicken curry separately.
My favourite was the dal, ooti, made with yellow peas. It was slightly thick, soothing and had what seemed like a garlicky hit. There was a salad which was crunchy, but too hot for me. And a chutney, which I thought was a sabzi. Thankfully I realised that it was not so, before I had to call for a fire engine as it was very hot. I had it as a pickle with the dal then & rice & that was perfect.
The pork curry had soya sauce according to the description on their instagram page. The gravy was savoury and had a robustness which came from the pork. The pork starred some voluptuous and sensuous belly fat.
The chicken thongba was light & yet flavourful. It reminded me of a village styled chicken curry that I once had in Malaysia. It had some similarity with the Bengali murgir jhol. The more traditional oily and spicy variety, compared to what we cook at our place. The glutinous rice offered a nice canvas to soak in the heat of the two gravies. My chilli heat tolerance level is low but I think you can ask for a low spice option. It was not as spicy as the food that I tried from a restaurant offering Chittagong food in Kolkata recently. That was so spicy that I couldn’t have it!
Coming back to Akhoi, the gravies connected with me & seemed like a continuum of what I am used to as a Bengali. I belong to the east of Bengal where people eat spicy food. I can imagine this being comfort food for my ancestors & peers. The black rice kheer with plump kishmish was the perfect ending.
