Poda Cooking at The Cook's Tale Canterbury Ancient Odia Fire Tradition

Fire changes food in a way no pan can quite repeat. It softens, chars, perfumes and deepens. In Odisha, on India’s eastern coast, that truth has shaped home cooking for generations through a tradition known as Poda.

In Odia, `poda` means food roasted over fire. Many people know the word through Chhena Poda, Odisha’s beloved baked cheese dessert with a caramelised top and a soft, grainy centre. But Poda goes far beyond sweets. It belongs to kitchens where fish, chicken, aubergines, tomatoes, garlic, chillies and seasonal vegetables meet wood fire, hot ash and glowing embers.

At The Cook’s Tale in Canterbury, this way of cooking feels personal. It connects the restaurant’s fine dining approach with something older and humbler: the taste of food cooked close to flame, where smoke and fire become ingredients in their own right.

Poda begins with fire, smoke and patience.

Poda means more than a famous dessert

Ask many lovers of Indian food about Poda and they’ll think first of Chhena Poda. That makes sense. The dessert has become one of Odisha’s best-known dishes, especially outside the region. Made with fresh chhena, sugar and cardamom, it’s traditionally baked until the outside turns dark and caramelised. The name itself means “burnt cheese”, though that translation doesn’t do justice to its careful balance of sweetness, texture and roasted flavour.

But in Odisha, Poda isn’t only a dish. It’s a method.

It describes food that has been roasted, charred or cooked by direct contact with fire or embers. In many Odia homes, that could mean fish wrapped and placed near coals. It could mean chicken cooked over wood until the skin tightens and the spices cling. It could mean vegetables buried in ash until their skins blacken and their flesh turns smoky and soft.

This is the heart of Odisha Poda: food shaped by flame, not rushed by it.

Wood fire cooking has a practical history. Before modern stoves became common, rural kitchens relied on the chulha, a clay or brick hearth fuelled by wood, dried twigs or crop remains. Cooking over a chulha took skill. Heat didn’t come with a dial. Cooks learned by sight, sound and smell.

Aubergines blistered when they were ready. Garlic softened beneath its papery skin. Chillies released a sharp scent as they hit the heat. Fish needed careful handling so it cooked through without drying. Chicken needed time, not aggression.

That kind of cooking teaches patience. It also teaches respect for ingredients.

When smoke becomes an ingredient

In many modern kitchens, smoke gets treated like something to remove. We open windows, switch on extractors and clean away the signs of fire. Poda takes a different view.

In traditional Odia fire cooking, smoke doesn’t sit in the background. It works its way into the food. It settles into the surface of a tomato. It clings to the skin of an aubergine. It mingles with mustard oil, salt, onion and chilli. It gives food a flavour that feels earthy rather than heavy.

There’s a reason this works so well with Odia ingredients.

Mustard has a strong place in Odisha cuisine. Mustard oil brings heat, sharpness and a nutty edge. Mustard paste adds bite and depth. Pair that with charred vegetables, fish or meat, and the result has layers: smoke, spice, acidity, sweetness and salt.

Seasonality matters too. Odisha’s cooking changes with what grows nearby and what the weather asks for. Tender vegetables, leafy greens, river fish, prawns, country chicken and winter produce all find different expressions through family cooking. Poda fits naturally into that rhythm because it doesn’t need heavy sauces or complicated equipment. It asks for good ingredients, steady heat and a cook who knows when to stop.

For barbecue lovers, this may sound familiar. Live-fire cooking across the world shares a common lesson: fire isn’t just heat. It’s flavour. The difference lies in the seasoning, the ingredients and the memory behind the method.

The chulha has shaped generations of Odia home cooking.

Dev’s childhood memory of vegetable bhorta

For Dev, chef at The Cook’s Tale, Poda isn’t an idea from a cookery book. It’s a childhood smell.

He remembers his grandmother’s kitchen in Odisha, where the chulha was alive with wood fire. Vegetables came from the home garden, not from a supermarket shelf. Tomatoes, aubergines, garlic and green chillies would go straight onto the embers. No tray. No foil. No careful distance from the flame.

The skins blackened. The tomatoes split and hissed. The aubergines softened until they almost collapsed. Garlic turned sweet inside its charred casing. Chillies blistered and released their heat into the smoky air.

Once cooked, his grandmother peeled away the burnt skins and mashed everything by hand. Then came finely chopped red onions, more garlic, salt and a generous touch of mustard oil. The result was a vegetable bhorta, simple to describe but hard to forget.

It wasn’t polished food. It didn’t need to be. It was bold, smoky, sharp and comforting all at once.

Later, when Dev’s family moved to the city, his mother recreated the same bhorta on a gas stove. She used the same tomatoes, aubergines, garlic, chillies, onions, salt and mustard oil. She cooked with the same care. The dish still tasted good.

But Dev remembers the difference.

The missing piece was the wood fire. Gas could cook the vegetables, but it couldn’t give them the same smoke. It couldn’t recreate the slow, uneven heat of embers or the faint flavour of ash and flame. The ingredients matched, yet the memory didn’t.

That small difference stayed with him. It showed how much technique matters. It also showed how much place matters. A dish can travel, but sometimes one element carries its soul.

Why The Cook’s Tale cooks with live charcoal

At The Cook’s Tale, those memories have found a new home in Canterbury. The restaurant draws on Odisha’s food traditions, while presenting them with the care and precision expected from fine dining. That balance matters. Regional Indian cuisine deserves more than a broad label and a familiar list of dishes.

Odisha cuisine has its own voice. It uses mustard, panch phoron, fresh seafood, rice, lentils, leafy greens, seasonal vegetables and gentle spicing in ways that differ from the better-known cuisines of north and south India. It can be subtle. It can be sharp. It often lets the main ingredient speak clearly.

Poda fits beautifully into that approach because it brings flavour without hiding the food.

The Cook’s Tale uses charcoal for its traditional live-fire cooking because charcoal gives steady heat and a deep, clean smokiness. It allows the kitchen to honour the old method while working with the control needed in a restaurant service. The aim isn’t to copy a village chulha exactly. It’s to carry forward the principle Dev remembers so clearly: fire should be part of the flavour.

That’s where charcoal grilled chicken becomes something more specific. In many restaurants, grilled chicken can feel like a technique looking for seasoning. In Odia fire cooking, the fire and the marinade work together. Mustard brings heat. Yoghurt tenderises and helps spices cling. Charcoal adds smoke and char. The result should taste complete, not simply cooked.

Mustard, spices and yoghurt prepare the chicken for the fire.

Introducing Poda Chicken at The Cook’s Tale

The new signature Poda Chicken at The Cook’s Tale starts with a whole chicken leg. The thigh bone is carefully removed, while the drumstick stays attached. That detail matters.

Removing the thigh bone helps the meat cook evenly over live fire, while keeping the drumstick preserves the character of the cut. It also makes the dish feel generous and rooted, rather than overly handled. The chicken is then marinated in mustard, spices and yoghurt before it meets the charcoal grill.

The mustard links it to Odisha. The yoghurt helps create tenderness and balance. The spices bring warmth without drowning the flavour of the meat. Then the fire does its work.

As the chicken cooks, the surface takes on colour. The marinade tightens and chars in places. Fat drips onto the charcoal, sending flavour back up in the smoke. The heat cooks the meat through, while the grill marks and smoky edges give each bite a different texture.

This is not simply grilled chicken.

It’s also not tandoori chicken, though it may sit in the same broad family of Indian fire cooking for some diners. Tandoori cooking traditionally uses a clay oven, where intense radiant heat cooks marinated meat quickly. Poda, in this context, draws from the Odia habit of roasting food over fire and embers, where smoke, char and mustard-led seasoning play a central role.

Both traditions deserve respect. They’re just not the same.

Poda Chicken tells a different story. It speaks of Odia homes, garden vegetables, chulha smoke, mustard oil and the memory of flavour that couldn’t be recreated on a city gas flame. It’s a restaurant dish, yes, but it begins with a family kitchen.

What makes Odia fire cooking different

Indian regional cuisine is often treated as one broad category in the UK, but that misses the details that make each region special. Odisha sits by the Bay of Bengal, with rivers, forests, temple food traditions and coastal ingredients shaping the way people cook. Its food can feel less familiar than Punjabi, Bengali or Keralan cooking, especially on British high streets.

That’s part of what makes it exciting.

Odia dishes often use mustard in a confident way. They also favour balance over excess. A dish may be savoury, smoky, lightly sour, gently sweet or warmly spiced without becoming heavy. Fire cooking sits comfortably within that pattern because it builds flavour through contact and time, not only through spice.

For guests at a Canterbury restaurant, this offers a different route into Indian food. It isn’t about chasing heat for its own sake. It’s about noticing how a marinade changes over charcoal, how smoke softens mustard’s sharpness, how char can make a simple ingredient feel fuller.

For anyone interested in traditional Odia food, live fire cooking or a more regional view of Indian cuisine, Poda Chicken is a strong place to start.

Poda Chicken brings Odisha’s fire tradition to the table in Canterbury.

Fire, memory and a plate in Canterbury

The beauty of Poda lies in its honesty. It doesn’t ask fire to stay invisible. It lets the flame leave a mark.

That mark might be a blackened aubergine skin in Dev’s grandmother’s kitchen. It might be the missing smoky note in his mother’s city version of bhorta. It might be the charred edge of Poda Chicken coming off the live charcoal at The Cook’s Tale.

Food memories often work this way. They live in details that seem small until they disappear. A stove can cook the same ingredients, but it can’t always carry the same atmosphere. A recipe can list every measure, but it can’t fully capture the scent of wood smoke drifting through a childhood kitchen.

At The Cook’s Tale, Poda is a way to bring those details forward with care. It honours a centuries-old Odia tradition while giving Canterbury guests a dish that feels immediate, generous and full of character.

Come and experience the ancient art of Poda at The Cook’s Tale in Canterbury, and taste how fire, smoke, mustard and memory can come together on one plate.