Bhukkad Boca

Strictly speaking, Bhukkad Boca is a café rather than a restaurant, but food and drink are served all day, and there’s even a ‘menú del día’. For a café, Bhukkad Boca’s hospitality ethos punches above its weight, thanks to the experienced couple behind this family-run business.

The name combines Punjabi and Spanish and translates as ‘hungry mouth’. The Punjabi strapline on their business card means ‘house of tea and snacks’, but there’s much more to experience here.

Annie and her Punjabi husband, Bally, transformed the former ‘El Quinto Pino’ café/bar themselves into the cosy space and front terrace that customers have been discovering and enjoying since January this year. The flavourful Indian street food and friendly ambience have been attracting people from beyond the neighbourhood, and it’s a recommended and convenient stop for anyone visiting Castell de Bellver.

Bally is the chef in the tiny but well-ordered kitchen, and Annie is front of house. Her hospitality management studies and subsequent experience in her native Cape Town, followed by private cheffing on superyachts and in properties in Mallorca, mean she’s well-qualified. But her warm-hearted personality and belief in community also shine through.

Bhukkad Boca offers menus for brunch, snacks, mains, sweet treats, and a 3-course ‘menú del día’ for a very reasonable 16€. Kids even get their own healthy dishes in this family-friendly café.

To enable me to try a few items as I was eating alone that day, Annie suggested a taster of three from the snack menu: one of their unmissable, home-made aloo samosas of spiced potato and peas (5€); vegetable pakoras – a staple in Indian homes (5€) – and vada pav, a delicious chickpea-battered potato fritter in a soft bun, with garlic chutney and tamarind, and speared with a pickled green chilli (10€). Tamarind, mint, and mango sauces accompanied these three expertly spiced – and satisfying – delights.

Bhukkad Boca’s brunch menu includes a bacon and egg naan (10€), inspired by one offered by the UK chain, Dishoom.

Next, I ate a warm turmeric quinoa salad of golden quinoa, chickpeas, cucumber, pickled red onion, raisins, fresh herbs, and almonds (8,50€). A small pot of tahini dressing was on the side. In many eateries, salads are drowned in dressing – sometimes making it hard to tell how fresh the salad ingredients are. Here, the separate dressing enables customers to add as much as they like – and the freshness of the locally sourced produce is evident. I had a slightly smaller-than-normal portion of this salad to leave space for dessert, of which there are two on the menu.

I ended with gulab jamun and kulfi (5€). Although unfamiliar to me, this berry-shaped, fried dough ball, soaked in a rose-flavoured sugar syrup, is a popular sweet treat at Indian celebrations. The kulfi was less dense and easier to spoon into than one I recently tried elsewhere.

Drinks to highlight include organic wine from the Peninsula (4€ glass/20€ bottle), kombuchas (from what Annie calls the ‘fridge of goodness’), some interesting Indian-twist cocktails (9€-10€), lassis (5€), and, most importantly, Indian Chai tea – made to Annie’s own recipe of spices and not from a commercial syrup (3€). It has to be tried.

There’s something about the combination of food, drink, setting, and personal service here that comforts the soul.

Bhukkad Boca is participating in the Ruta de Tapas con Rosa Blanca from March 12th to the 22nd; a bottle of Rosa Blanca beer and a delicious samosa for only 4,50€ is the perfect reason to pay a visit.

Photos: Jan Edwards

Prices correct at time of writing.