Nepal to New York
There are now plenty of options for Nepali food in Little India
The streets around Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens, have long formed the heart of New York’s Little India. But a stroll past the storefronts these days suggests Little India’s name might need some altering. Sprinkled among the traditional Indian curry houses are newer restaurants offering Nepalese, Bandgladeshi, Tibetan and Bhutanese dishes — a reflection of the neighborhood’s changing demographics.
When Nabin Sherchan came to New York from Nepal in 1998, meeting fellow Nepalis in the city meant planning ahead. The relatively few Nepalis were scattered around Queens; meetups had to be arranged on weekends, when everyone could travel to Jackson Heights to sip tea at Indian restaurants, grab some VCR tapes of Bollywood movies and head home.
“I missed talking in Nepali, you know just the language, so we always tried meeting other Nepalis on our days off,” says Sherchan. One of the things he missed most was Nepali food. “We would try to make Nepali food at home whenever we had friends over,” he recalls.
But things have changed in the last decade. There are now over a dozen Nepali restaurants in Jackson Heights alone, serving the neighborhood’s fast-growing Nepali community.
So after working at a Subway sandwich store in Upper East Side in Manhattan for nine years, Sherchan and his wife Sharmila opened Mustang Thakali Kitchen in Jackson Heights. Sherchan says the restaurant serves about 150 customers a day.
“We have both Nepali and non-Nepali customers who come here for authentic Nepali food,” he said. Mustang Thakali’s most popular dishes are Nepali dumplings called momo and thali set; the latter is a plateful of curries with rice, lentils and an array of side dishes.
While the census puts the number of Nepalese in New York City at about 5,000, Sherchan, who is also a member of Non-Resident Nepali Association, believes the number could be five times higher. “There are thousands of undocumented Nepalis working and living in New York City, so there are probably around 30,000 Nepalis here,” he said.
Changing clientele
Patel Brothers, the best-known Indian grocery chain in America, opened its sprawling, 11,000-square-foot Jackson Heights outlet in 1984. It’s still predominantly an Indian store, but now it also sells pickles and noodles from Nepal. While Nepali produce stacked in the corner might be easy to miss, manager Nandu Patel says customers do come looking specifically for the Nepali products.
“We started selling Nepali products since the number of Nepalis frequenting the store has increased significantly in the last four or five years,” says Patel, who has been working at the store since it opened.
Sherchan says he gets most of the ingredients for Mustang Thakali Kitchen from Indian stores like Patel Brothers. And for special ingredients like jimbu, a peppery herb used in regional Nepali cuisine that Sherchan’s restaurant is famous for, Sherchan reaches out to his friends and family back home. “These days there are so many Nepalese traveling to the US, so we don’t have any problem getting herbs and spices from Nepal that aren’t available here,” says Sherchan.
In fact most Nepali restaurants in Jackson Heights shop for their ingredients in Indian and Chinese grocery stores nearby. Himal KC, who works at Nepali Bhancha Ghar restaurant, also in Jackson Heights, says that she shops mostly at Patel Brothers to prepare Nepali food at home and at the restaurant. She spends close to ten hours at the restaurant making hundreds of fried sweet rice doughnuts called selroti which is prepared during all major festivals in Nepal.
“People call me roti didi (roti sister) here,” says KC. “They say the selrotis I make here reminds them of Nepal.”
The influx of Nepali students for higher education in the US has also contributed to the expanding population here. According to International Education Exchange’s (IIE) 2012 Open Doors report, Nepal ranked 11th as a place of origin for international students to the US.
While all Nepali students do not choose to come to New York City in the beginning, many of them do end up in the city looking for better opportunities. Nisha Gurung from Kathmandu came to New York after she was unable to find a job and pay tuition fee in Utah. She now works as a waitress in Al-Naimat, a Pakistani restaurant in Jackson Heights, while saving money to return to college. But she says New York City gave her more than just a job to pay her bills. “Here we can find so many Nepali people, so many Nepali students,” Gurung says, “I get so many friends over here.”
Looking beyond Jackson Heights
Kamala Gauchan, 55, is the chef and owner of Dhaulagiri Kitchen on Manhattan’s Lexington Avenue. She came to New York 17 years ago, worked as a housekeeper for nearly seven years, moved to restaurant management in Jackson Heights, then opened Dhaulagiri Kitchen in Jackson Heights in 2012. The restaurant was featured in The New York Times , Andrew Zimmern’s Bizzare Foods, The Village Voice and others. “I have been home only four times in the last 17 years because I have to take care of so many things here,” she says.
Dhaulagiri Kitchen is the only Nepali restaurant in Manhattan, according to Gauchan. She moved from Jackson Heights to Manhattan, despite knowing that she would lose a lot of Nepali customers living there. Most of all she would lose big orders for Nepali events that happen regularly in the neighborhood. But she wanted to take Nepali food to Manhattan, where she says a lot of Nepalis have started working. “I don’t have any regret moving to Manhattan because many of my customers still come to the restaurant here,” she says.
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Everybody around Bhrikuti was too tired to take pictures of her while she was running around with a mic and camera.
