Restaurants in Dinajpur slash use of onion

Amid a rise in onion prices, the use of the cooking ingredient has dropped significantly in the restaurants in Dinajpur.

Traders said they had been seeing poor sales of onion for more than a month, as the spice had gone beyond the reach of most of the customers.

In the town’s kitchen markets, a kg of the bulb was being sold at Tk 250 on Monday, while onion-leaf was selling at Tk 60 a kg in wholesale markets, reports our Dinajpur correspondent.

Sambhunath Das, a wholesaler at Bahadur Bazar, said his daily sale of the bulbs dropped down to 200kg from a tonne in the span of several weeks.

Talking to the correspondent, several restaurant owners said the high price of the spice prompted them to use less of it in their dishes. Otherwise, they would not be able to sell the dishes at affordable prices.

Mohammad Rustom, owner of Rustom Hotel in Nimtola area, said he started buying five kgs of onion against a regular demand of 25 kg per day.

“We cannot charge our customers extra for using the right amount of onions in dishes,” he said. 

Besides, many restaurants stopped serving their customers sliced onion in free salads.

“We stopped serving onions in free salads since the price crossed Tk 150 a kg,” said Goni Mia, owner of a small restaurant in Bahadur Bazar. 

They also started using only a kilo of the bulbs against a demand of seven kgs per day. “I used to spend Tk 200 for onions every day. Now for only a kg, it costs me Tk 250.” 

Many eateries have also stopped using the spice to cook traditional omelettes. Piyaju (a dish requiring lots of onions to cook) is not being sold for a long time now, he said. 

Officials of the Department of Agricultural Extension in Dinajpur said the situation would improve when the locally produced onion started arriving at markets. 

Touhidul Islam, deputy director of the department, said it would take at least 15 days to start harvesting the bulbs.