I landed in New York in 2001, just ahead of 9/11. It was so different from anything I had seen till then. But there were people of all colours and that was kind of reassuring. The first semester was thick with coursework, and winter break came as a relief. I had friends from JNU as well as Presidency scattered across the US. Some in Ohio, some in North Carolina. That first winter break, some of them visited New York and together we discovered the city.
While in Calcutta, during my growing up years, I remained ignorant of its rich gastronomic landscape. The greater adventure seemed to be out there, far away from home. I appreciated good food even then, but that was about it. I had never explored Tiretta Bazar China Town, I didn’t know about the wealth of sandesh varieties of north Calcutta. I learnt about all that much later, from reading about home in far away New York.
When I was away, that is when I became more Bengali. Food aided that becoming. When I was in JNU, the very first year, there was this grand International Food Festival. That’s when I had my food awakening. I remember the Sudanese stall with its fantastic kebabs and patties. In Delhi, there was an opportunity to experiment beyond the campus. The Kerala Hotel in Munirka, the Nagaland stall at Dilli Haat with its root beer and momos, the Afghan mess in Ballimaran with its novelties. New York was this experience multiplied several times over.
Anyway, that first winter break, my friends and I discovered an Ethiopian restaurant called Meskerem. I remember their injera — a pancake-like thing served with sautéed vegetables and thickened, curried lentil. I remember the portions: American portions, massive.
Another standout discovery during that break was sting-ray steamed in sambal and wrapped in lotus leaf and roti telur, which is something like our moglai parota, at a Malaysian eatery. As the semesters rolled on, the coffee stall owners and deli owners — most of them from various immigrant communities — became familiar figures and we graduated from nods and good mornings to brief conversations.
One such stall owner told me of a Moroccan shop in Astoria in Queens. It was close to the Steinway piano factory. Astoria used to be a Greek immigrant hub. But when I went there, it was a vibrant North African hub full of Algerian, Moroccan and Egyptian eateries. I couldn’t find the Moroccan shop called Tanjawi the first two times. I had been told it was next to a mosque and I was looking out for domes and minarets.
The mosque eventually turned out to be a staid community centre. At Tanjawi, I had stewed lamb shanks and grilled chicken. I had grilled octopii at Sabry’s, an Egyptian seafood restaurant, in the same neighbourhood.
An Uzbek coffee seller told me about a neighbourhood of Uzbek expats. Rego Park in Queens was referred to as Registan. There, at Cheburechnaya, I had the lamb chebureki, which is basically a monster-sized samosa and lamb pelmeni or lamb dumplings in chickpea soup.
Long after I returned to Calcutta, I took a friend out for lunch one hot humid afternoon. The plan was to have nihari at Sufia. When we placed our order, the elderly Bihari waiter muttered, “Yeh na waqt hai, na mausam.”
In America, waqt and mausam rarely came in the way of food cravings. The food carts, delis and bodegas seemed to be open round the clock. I remember two Egyptian cafes, Mombar and Kabab Cafe, on Steinway Street. The former was famous for its tasting menu. They would throw in all kinds of meat — pigeon, rabbit, lamb — and whip up something fancy. They also made out-of-the world falafels. Both places had limited seating and if we went at dinner time, cafe owners’ families too would be seated and eating. At Kabab Cafe there was no menu. We had to ask Chef Ali to whip up something.
All that time, food was still only about food, not some greater enquiry. Not about society and culture, nothing of the sort. Now when I
look back, I wish had asked those questions, had those conversations.
I followed food blogs — most of them long defunct — and regularly read food reviews. Other American cities did not have New York’s variety, not in those days at least.
New York had a bustling Chinatown. It used to be Little Italy, but in my time it was very little Italy and mostly China. There were Bangladeshi eateries in Jackson Heights and Jamaica in Queens, and Kensington in Brooklyn. Places with names such as Ghoroa, Jhinuk and Shapla where I feasted on varieties of Bengali-style fish dishes, cooked in ways unfamiliar to me with uchchhe or lau or kanchkola. They also sold great quality mishti doi.
The good Indian eateries were mostly restaurants, too expensive for students. We went there, if at all, on special occasions. But I fondly remember Asaivam in Manhattan’s Curry Hill, where I tasted non-vegetarian Tamil food. The manager, a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee, gave me tips about good Sinhalese places in Staten Island and Flushing.
But apart from the ubiquitous halal carts dotting the street intersections across the five boroughs, my staples were the hole-in-the-wall eateries run by immigrant Dominicans, Senegalese and Ghanaians. The neighbourhood of South Slope in Brooklyn, where I lived at one point, had many Mexican bodegas and tiny Caribbean eateries. I remember a Senegalese restaurant called Africa Kine in Harlem. That is where I tasted thieboudienne — a platter of joloff rice, pile of stewed root vegetables and grilled fish — usually bass or kingfish.
There was a large contigent of Italians and Turkish batchmates. More immigrants. The Turks favoured a kebab joint called Yatagan near Washington Square Park; sometimes I tagged along. It sold delicious doner kebab sandwiches. The Italians would insist home food was the best and stayed away from restaurants. They would either cook at home
or go back to Italy as frequently as possible for home-cooked food.
Very close to New York University, in East Village, there were these two streets that constituted Little India. They were actually full of Bangladeshi-managed eateries selling Brick Lane-styled North Indian food along with rasam and pappadam. I remember having stuffed quail in one such place called Mitali East. A master’s student from Pakistan took me to a Pakistani-Punjabi food joint called Lahore, that was popular with cab drivers. They served dahi vadas, samosas, dal and excellent meat dishes such as bhindi gosht and gobi gosht. Once in a while, Latino cabbies would share tips about torta and burrito joints.
I lived in an accommodation rented out by immigrants. My first landlord was an NYPD cop of Albanian origin, the second, an Ecuadorian couple. We regularly exchanged food. And somehow at another end of the world, so far away from home, I felt accommodated.
Now, here in Calcutta, when I see momo, kochuri, litti and petai parota stalls manned by migrants from distant or nearby places, I am reminded of the migrants I met on a daily basis in New York and their kindness. And I cannot unsee all that they represent.
As told to and illustrated by Upala Sen
(Guha teaches economics at Presidency University, Calcutta. He spent a decade in New York, first as a student then as a teacher.)