Stilwell Road, Assam

I have been travelling a bit via Google Maps lately and following the old Stilwell Road, a legendary road built by the Americans in WWII.  The road starts near the improbably named town of Margherita in Assam and passes through Burma and onwards to Kunming in China.  Starting in India, you can drive up to the Burma border on that road today, and—in passing through one of the most rugged and remote outposts of the world--it touches upon three distinct worlds.

Near Margherita is the town of Dibrugarh.   Zoom into the town on a Satellite view, and it still looks like the randomly nucleated small town that it was.  A haphazard jumble of streets, and names of places like Little Flower School, Hotel Mona Lisa, Little Mermaid Swimming Pool, and John Gym.  I can imagine that there are musclemen there, in John’s Gym, with posters of Schwarzenegger on their walls, and would be guitarists wailing out their amps in make shift rock bands practicing under tin roofs (Assam is full of them).  This is the first of the three worlds.

About 60 miles west of Dibrugarh is the town of Ledo and from there Highway 153, aka Stillwell Road, aka Ledo Road, heads eastward passing through the fields and the tea gardens of the Brahmaputra valley.   Looking from above, on Google, it seems a peaceful place with farms, and small huts and namghars (prayer halls).  The Burma border is about 38 miles from Ledo, and the road climbs into the Patkai mountains, and makes a series of switchbacks into rugged, remote land that leads to the romantically named Pangsau Pass at the India-Burma border.  This is a road where the Burmese Kachin guerillas travel.  It can get waterlogged in the monsoons and is criss-crossed often by elephants and the logging business.  Stillwell road then leaves the mountains and drops into the plains of Burma, and into the second world.

Seen from Google, this road looks like a thing of the past.  It appears to be a dirt road.  There is very little habitation.  Whatever settlement there is, has built up around the economy of the road.  Burma—this second world--looks like the Assam of 60 years ago.   Within a few miles the road re-enters the mountains, and into what now looks like godforsaken territory.  After a few hundred miles in Burma, Stillwell road climbs up a second mountain range and passes through into China.

This is the third of the distinct worlds and it is a new world.  Highways are clearly marked.  There are many more cities and towns.  I zoom into the border town of Baoshan.  It looks like a modern city.  Baoshan airport is a few miles away.  The downtown is arrayed within a grid pattern of streets.   Zoom in higher, and there are wide streets with cars and pedestrian cross walks.  It is a world that would be familiar to someone in Delhi, or London, or Beijing.  Yet it is 70 miles from nowhere and the border with Burma. 

Stilwell Road is named after the four star American General George W. Stilwell, an Allied hero of the war in Assam-Burma, and the ex-quarterback of Yonkers High School who led his school to the Westchester County championship in 1899 (http://www.yonkershistory.org/8_3_1.html).  The 1000-mile road was built in about 3 years by a crew of largely African American soldiers and local labor, at great cost and risk to human life.  My mother, as a child, remembers American soldiers in their small town in Assam--they would be viewed partly with curiosity and partly with awe.  It is a curious, personal aside, that this man, who grew up a few miles from where we live, has a road named after him in a remote, almost unknown corner of Northeast India, where I come from. 

Once completed, Stilwell Road transported goods from Assam to Kunming in China  for logistical support during the war.  Following the war, the road fell into disrepair.  Recently I understand that the Chinese and Indian legs have been revived, though the Burmese portion remains undeveloped.  Pangsau Pass, the entry into Burma from Assam is open on specific days for local traffic both ways.  My trip has been of the armchair variety—for a poignant account of a real trip up to Pangsau pass take a look at http://travellenz.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/arun-stilwell-pangsau/

Margherita gets its name from the reigning queen of Italy in the late 19th. century, so named in honor of an Italian engineer involved in civil construction here around that time.   These are the delicious anomalies scattered about the North East, like the foxgloves and wainscoting of old Shillong buildings that have now become part of the genome of this place.

Dibrugarh to Baoshan is less than 300 miles as the crow flies, about the distance between NYC and DC.   I can get to DC and back on the same day for a business meeting.  But China has remained ever so far in our minds, beyond the great-unknown forests and rebels of Burma.  This same distance, transposed to the mountains of that land, is magnified by geopolitical differences.  I would love to go to Burma.  Someday before they turn Stillwell into a 4-lane highway.

Jewel of Himalaya Restaurant, Yorktown Heights

The first Nepali (Nepalese) restaurant in Upper Westchester

http://www.jewelofhimalaya.com

Tikka Masala, Biryani, and Vindaloo.  Introduced by some unwitting immigrant restaurateur in Britain, who knew not what he was doing, these are the three pillars of commercial Indian food in the West.  They enable enough business and provide for a roof over the restaurant.  And in a clever move, this is exactly what Jewel of Himalaya, the new Nepali restaurant in Yorktown has done—one that might ensure its survival while offering fare that is off beat and exciting.  Encrusted inside their jewel of a menu are these reassuring favorites—that a diner with “Indian” on his mind can order up, like some old song from a juke box.

But if you have any taste for good food, then I would ask you to look in-between these three pillars for this is where the Himalayan Jewel sparkles.  This is, as far as I know, the first Nepali restaurant in all of upper Westchester and they deserve a warm welcome.  Jettison the conventional dishes that you see. That would be a good start.

Nepal sits(rather uncomfortably) in between China and India and while the influence on its cuisine is decidedly Indian, the Tibetan and Chinese touch is unmistakable.  Start your order with the Thukpa—a hearty vegetable (and meat if you desire) noodle soup.  Move on to the Momos—steamed meat dumplings similar to what is called Shumai in Chinese restaurants.  Then end with a Nepali Thali as your main course. The first two dishes come from Tibet, while the thali is almost conventional Indian.   A thali is a full meal that comes with a bowl of rice, some meat, a  daal, a couple of curries, some pickle and a dessert.  Each item is placed in a small stainless steel bowl, and the constellation of bowls is placed on a stainless steel plate.  You can get Indian thalis in New York City.  Consuming them can at times be the equivalent of gargling with petroleum and then inserting a lit match into your mouth.  The Nepali thali avoids pyrotechnics, it is deliciously under spiced, and lets the flavors of the vegetables and the meats seep through.  You can have it with meat or in the vegetarian version—I would recommend going for the goat meat version, which the proprietor refers to as “mutton”, following the norm throughout South Asia.

This is a different South Asian restaurant that brings with it a fresh perspective.  The way the thali was cooked is the way home food would be cooked.  And if you are a noodle soup afficionado, give the Thukpa a try.  It is lesser known than Vietnamese Pho or Japanese Ramen, but is just as good.  This is a place not to be missed. 

Jin Ramen, Harlem, Near Columbia University

http://www.jinramen.com

There is a new Ramen place, Jin Ramen, on 125^th and Broadway.  It caters largely to a Columbia University crowd and serves four kinds of Ramen—Shio, Miso, Shoyu, and Tonkotsu, the latter one in a spicy and non-spicy version.  Ramen places in the US are sort of like the way McDonalds are in India.  A popular fast food concept that has been moved to a new geography and upscaled to offer more of a “dining experience”.  Most Ramen-Yas in Japan are places where the food is served at a feverish pace, the sitting counters are tight and customer turnout is rapid.  Food orders are taken at the counter and no one lingers at the table beyond the time it takes to slurp down a bowl of noodles and broth.  On the other hand, Jin Ramen, like other places in New York, is a sit-in establishment where the waitress will take your order. 

I had the Tonkotsu Ramen, the richest of the Ramens, where the soup is boiled with pork bones and cartilege for hours, the end result a rich and heavy broth laden with fat globules.  Immersed in this broth are slices of pork belly and Ramen noodles—the outcome a thick and satisfying meal  with so much fat that at the end, you will not need any chap stick for hours (if it is winter).   My son had the Shio Ramen.  Not to be confused with the more commonly available soy based Shoyu Ramen, Shio has a light, yellowish broth that is made with chicken and some pork.  Tonkotsu lacks the Shio’s delicate flavors, but brings with it more of the straight line acceleration of a big-engined muscle car.

Jin was crowded even on a late Sunday evening, and peak times during weekends require a longish wait.  The sitting space is small and the cooking area, on display beyond the counters, is a hotbed of activity with steam peeling off of bubbling broths, colanders of noodles scooped out of cauldrons two at a time, and things getting cooked on large flames on large cooktops.  Jin serves straight upfront Ramen without a lot of variants, as you will find in Menchenko Tei, for instance.  While I am not a Ramen expert by any stretch, the food felt as good as I have had in Japan.

Mallu Café in Philadelphia

10181 Verree Rd
Philadelphia

This is as good as Indian food gets in the United States.  Mallu café is no café at all—you cannot buy coffee here, and the proprietor will direct you to the 4 Dunken Doughnuts nearby for coffee.  But the Malayali food that they have, food authentic to Kerala, the sultry communist state in India flush with gulf money, high education rates, procreative “half-cylinder” lungis and steamy movie heroines, is out of this world.  Our friends A&S recommended this place, this torrid, tumid space warp of a place in a coterie of shops between two roads that form a “Y”. It is about 16 miles from downtown Philly, in a far away suburb.  If you can make the trip you will not be disappointed.

Avial, beef curry, goat pepper fry—these are the three dishes that we had with rice and layered parathas.  The curries were dry, fried with spices and grated “kvwok’nuts”, this species referred to as a “coconut” elsewhere in India.  I could discern hints of Milagai Podi, the signature South Indian mixture of spices and lentils.  The food was rich without being oleaginous, and led to none of the characteristic feeling of heaviness after an Indian restaurant meal.  Whatever little oil that was used, was infused with the fragrance released by the coconuts and spices during frying, and bound the meats in a tight clasp of comraderie.  The food was hot, but as M noted, this came from the pepper, as in many traditional Indian foods, and not the use of chilli powder.  I do not recall eating with such abandonment of restraint, since the meal at Bukhara in Delhi in 2005.

The walls are painted a Kerala red, cutlery consists of plastic plates and spoons and the dishes come in plastic containers.  The proprietor flat out ignores you till you approach with trepidation to remind him that perhaps you could also have a meal while you are there.  At which point you realize that he is a friendly fellow who then pulls up a chair next to you and chats abouts his life.  This all gets irrelevant once you start eating. The cook is from Goa but the food is authentic Malayali (as swears my knowledgeable friend).  You look at the food, at the red painted walls, at the deep shadows cast on the walls, at the proprietor standing behind the counter plastered with a poster of a Mallu “dhamaka”, and you can almost feel that there is a bicycle repair shop under a coconut tree that has materialized outside, with a kid seeking a leak in a tube by dunking it in water, and a truck with OK Tata signs and no brake lights getting repairs done by the tea shop.  The pasty curries, with their concentrated heat, and their intense deep flavors will lull you into this world willingly till you see no more that you are in Philly.  This place was--to paraphrase a stuffed shirt art commentator that we heard later in the day on a visit to a van Gogh exhibit--“utterly delightful, what a joy”.  

Pod Restaurant, Philadelphia, near the University of Pennsylvania

www.podrestaurant.com/
 

Pod is a gussied up American take on Asian food run by a well known Philadelphia restauranteur, Stephen Starr.  It has a 60’s retro-chic interior with a smattering of dim bluish and purple light cast over white furniture. It is a glissile place where, by the looks of it, there appears to be no friction: a bottle of beer could just slide forever down the long bar. To me the place feels like the womb of an enormous whale deep under the Arctic waters.  It is a cold ambiance.  Cozy is not the word that I would use for it, but some folks like it (including my son). 

We ordered kalbi-beef fried rice, lamb lo-mein, and pork belly buns. The food is done with an American sensibility, it all tastes very fresh. Snippets of sweet, sour, and spicy by-lines keep it interesting.  But—like the ambiance--it is frictionless with no rough edges or drama.  You can switch from a spoonful of rice to a spoonful of the lo-mein without discontinuity.  If you are having a business dinner, this is a good thing, and it is a perfect meal for conversation, should you succeed in reading the menu under the dim lights. The service is excellent.  The food is unique and has been prepared with care, but it is a uniqueness that appears engineered and lacking in spontaneity.