By Murali K Menon
Mumbai, March 8: OFF Chowringhee Road in the Raj’s prematurely ageing former capital is another street that pops up in any food conversation you have with a Kolkatan.
The Tibetan food at Elgin Road, they proclaim, is the most authentic in the country. Not without reason, too, since the momo and thukpa joints have been around in Kolkata since the infamous Chinese land grab. Delhi, too, has its Tibetan spots. But Mumbai, all along, has been handicapped by its geography.
But now, over 40 years after the refugee influx, there’s finally Sernya Tibetan and Chinese Kitchen, squeezed in between an ugly used car showroom and a noveau Irani restaurant in Oshiwara, Andheri. Fairly unostentatious, the Sernya is adorned with Oriental curios and calendars (ironically, all of Chinese-make, like almost everything else today), though a framed photograph of the Dalai Lama and the Karmapa, along with calm-inducing Tibetan chants, restores the balance.
Tibet, for Kamal Karma Lama, its forty-something India-born owner, is nothing but a fading filial memory. The former television production controller decided on an eatery, after being inundated by repeated dinner requests from neighbours and friends. “I’m all Indian but most of the food we eat at home would be what Tibetans still eat up there,” says Lama, whose kitchen is manned by third-gen Tibetans from Sikkim.
And while asking for sampa (roasted flour ground from barley and had with tea) or dried yak meat might be overdoing it, the other mainstays of a Tibetan diet—momos and thukpas-generate generous applause from the palate. A culinary compass passed down on the generational raft ensures that the momos are steamed just right—softish, with sauces made from Himalayan red chillies, very polishable. A far cry from the dumplings which masquerade as momos in most Mumbai restaurants. The same goes for the thukpa, which is almost as good as the ones you get in Little Tibets across the country—though the spice levels in it appear to be on the higher side.
If these two are the stars of Sernya’s menu, there are other attempts at fusion on its part. The Denzien De (rice marinated in Tibetan spice with chicken and mushrooms) and the Chango Cshasa (chicken marinated in ginger juice and tossed with soya, garlic and fresh chill) are succulent examples that hit it off with each other. They comes across as novel Oriental cuisine, with a faintly Thai-like texture and taste, and faint hints of chang or rice wine. One is also spared the dominance of the evil Emperor Ajinomoto, who lords over almost anything remotely Chinese or South East Asian in Mumbai.
But Sernya’s improvisations, for all their appeal, are just satellites to the momos and thukpa, both veg and non-vegetarian (that’s mot-shod and cshasa, respectively). While Tibet still remains inaccessible (unless you are a rich tourist), these two have it in them to take your taste-buds on the next flight to Lhasa.
Call: 5678 4644
Meal for two: Rs 350
