The famous Niribili Hotel: Tota Mia's arrangement of 80 vorta items in Nikli Haor

Nikli Haor, in recent years, has become one of the most popular tourist destinations in Bangladesh, especially among university-going people with a penchant for adventure. 

However, Nikli Haor and its surrounding areas have many hidden gems regarding food items, with Tota Mia's restaurant serving vortas of 80 types and vajis being the most notable.

Tota Mia's restaurant is special because their food items are farm fresh and collected from the Brahmaputra and Shitalakkhya rivers. 

The fish and the vegetables used in the vortas are directly collected from the villages, which makes the food items retain a lot of flavour and taste, something that is unthinkable when it comes to the food served in most restaurants.

The cooking procedure being followed in his restaurant is quite in line with the traditional cooking style of the Bengali villages, as he doesn't use any gas stove, which adds to the overall rustic touch of his restaurant.

Almost all the vegetables traditionally used in Bengali cuisine are found, and among the fish, freshwater fish of many different types, some of which are now rare, are also found in Tota Mia's restaurant. 

However, the speciality of Tota Mia's restaurant lies in the number of vortas he prepares, which brings quite a lot of tourists flocking to his place to get the taste of the exquisite and quirky vortas. 

His restaurant also sells pickles of many types, and the tourists have highly revered them.

A plate with fish and rice costs about 180 taka: a vorta package of 100 taka has vortas of at least 10 types, and a shobji package of 100 taka has sabjis of 8 types. The 200 taka vorta and sobji package, however, has vortas of 22 types and sobji of 16 types.

Tota Mia's restaurant is one of the thousands of niche restaurants situated in many corners of the country serving fresh food. However, due to rampant urbanisation, their numbers are rapidly decreasing.

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