Chawlas2

INDIA 🇮🇳

COVID-19 UPDATE: Chawlas2 is takeout only for the moment, but there is a triangle park on the same block with convenient benches for would-be outdoor diners. You can also order online through their website.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Written by Joseph Gessert, photographed by Liv Dillon.

Chawlas2 is not the second of two restaurants, as you might guess from the name, but is rather the first US outpost of a chain that started in 1960 in Uttar Pradesh, a province in northern India near Punjab. The location is somewhat inauspicious, at the far edge of Queens near JFK. Despite the cars whizzing by on Rockaway Boulevard, the restaurant draws repeat diners from the neighborhood and across Brooklyn and Queens.

Chawla’s signature dish cream chicken ($11.99, below) is a variation on butter chicken, with the gravy bolstered by cream and green cardamon, and all the red parts omitted. The seasoning is sublime, and a nice contrast to the usual over-the-top fireworks of Indian flavor profiles. It goes best with plenty of naan or rice.

Speaking of naan, keema naan with gravy ($7.49) is a real standout from the sides menu. The naan is stuffed with seasoned ground chicken and served with a container of mutton gravy. There’s no chunks of meat in the gravy, but the flavor leaves no doubt that sheep were involved in the preparation.

Also on the sides menu are several chaats, Indian and Pakistani snacks that combine various contrasts: hot and cold, sweet and tangy, soft and crunchy. Chawla’s samosa chaat ($6.49, not shown) is a strong rendition of a great dish, with chopped-up samosas topped with chickpeas, potato, yoghurt, and the dueling chutneys of mint and tamarind. Pani puri are off the menu for the moment, presumably because they lose their crunch in takeout form, but papri chaat ($6.49, below) fills in nicely, with the samosas replaced with fried crackers.

There is a range of tandoori items, and both meat and vegetable curries, though vegetarians in the neighborhood might be better off down the block at Satguru Sweets, which has a full menu of veggie items. Chawlas’ chili mushrooms ($10.99, above) reflect Uttar Pradesh’s proximity to the borders with Nepal and Tibet, with the chili gravy more reminiscent of familiar Chinese dishes than most Indian food.

Chawlas2 is just off the Van Wyck Expressway, on a three-block stretch of businesses that includes four Indian restaurants, a Guyanese restaurant, a Guyanese-Chinese restaurant, two Jamaican restaurants, a Chinese-Thai-Indian restaurant, and more. Stop at Chawlas2 for the cream chicken and keema naan, and then maybe add a dish or two from one of the other restaurants down the block. The connections built between peoples by geography and immigration are present in the menus, and we very are privileged in New York to have access to all of these cuisines in such close proximity to one another. Maybe dropping your friend off at JFK doesn’t have to be such a chore after all.

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SOUTH OZONE PARK Queens

131-19 Rockaway Blvd.

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Pakiza

PAKISTAN 🇵🇰

[COVID-19 UPDATE: The few tables inside have been removed for now, but the steam table operates daily as it always has, and takeout is as fresh as ever.]

For a good chunk of the city's restaurants, the pandemic has hit them with a vigor that appears unlikely to subside anytime soon. Most that want to forge the path forward have adapted as best they can, building outdoor seating areas and more robust delivery systems.

On a recent hot day, kulfi served as immediate relief.

But then there are also certain sectors that seem almost unaffected, besides the annoyances everyone faces to be outside their own home. The steam table joints up and down this section of Coney Island Avenue still have all of their spots full of freshly prepared meals that both the neighborhood and working taxi drivers pop in quickly for throughout the day and night.

If you arrive by car to a place like Lahori Chilli or Pakiza, yellow and green will occupy most spaces out front, and many onto each of the side streets closest. Certainly there are bottom lines that are not seen when something like this is said, but frankly it is a brief glimmer of hope to witness business still going ok for some.

At Pakiza, most of the steam table offerings are available in two sizes, a small for $6 and a large for $12. A recent visit was able to procure large portions of haleem and biriyani and a small lamb curry, annotated in the photo below. Most orders will also throw in a container of lettuce and onions as well as a good portion of raita, a yogurt-based condiment full of cucumber, mint, and coriander.

The lamb curry ($6, small portion) is definitely worthy of a large order, which has already been noted for next time. Grab some naan ($1.50 each) for use with their also excellent haleem ($12, large order), a spicier than usual version of the barley, lentil, and shredded chicken stew. The workaday biriyani ($12, large portion) satisfied just fine, but of the three it could have been the one ordered in a smaller quantity.

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KENSINGTON Brooklyn

1032 Coney Island Avenue

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Gorkhali Nepalese Restaurant & Bar

NEPAL 🇳🇵

It must have been eight months or more since Gorkhali had put up its bold sign on Roosevelt Avenue, signaling another expansion of the area's Himalayan cuisine. But then as happens with a lot of restaurants trying to open, realities of bureaucracy and the unknown set in and the windows remained papered. There must have been two dozen occasions on other trips to the neighborhood that the (lack of) progress was checked in on.

And then finally, poof! In mid-February the restaurant opened up and hit the ground running. The first floor seems to be constantly busy with small groups of family and friends as well as solo diners coming in for lunch. There is a steam table, possibly a sign of the previous tenant or maybe offerings still to come, but currently unused.

If you come for a one of those weekday lunches, you will be seated downstairs where the walls have been given a coat of bright orange paint. Upstairs is where you will find the "bar" portion of the name, along with quite a bit more seating amongst an open dining room. This seems to be where the action will take place during busy times, albeit without spirits as for now there is no alcohol.

One of the first things you notice when looking at the menu here at Gorkhali is that unless your familiarity with Nepalese foods is very high, there are many dishes that are unfamiliar and not in every restaurant around town. This was true on this occasion with the bhatmas sadeko (above), a "salad" snack made of dried soybeans and some excellent chili and herb enhancements. This made the lack of a bar more sad, as the spicy crunch would go perfectly with a cold beer.

Because chicken and vegetables made their way to the table in other forms, an order of the beef jhol momo (above) was preferred, eight perfectly formed dumplings in a slightly spicy soup. This dish was slap in the face good, rising to near the level of the jhol momo from Bajeko Sekuwa in Sunnyside. It is one of those times in life where drinking all the leftover juice is required, embarrassment or not.

Halfway through the meal a family of three sat down and ordered thalis, a different one for each person. While waiting, they told the story of the chef, a woman who had faced tragedy and loss but was in their view most deserving of a restaurant like this. They were very excited to be able to eat her food on a more regular basis now.

Furthering the theme of appetizers, the chicken choila (above) is one with dense grilled hunks of meat cooked with red chili oil. These are a bit tough and dry but absolutely delicious. Order this in Nepal and you are likely to have sweat running down your forehead, but here they tone it down quite a bit.

Another dish that was initially unrecognized was khasiko taas (below), boneless pan-fried goat. The finished product takes on the texture of being deep-fried, but the crispy exterior is done through low heat and oil at the bottom of a tawa. The spices and herbs just taste like Nepal, but feel free to squeeze a bit of the lime to cut the grease.

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JACKSON HEIGHTS Queens
77-04 Roosevelt Avenue

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Bikanervala

INDIA 🇮🇳

You would not know it when you see the bright colors and modern logo, but Bikanervala has over 100 years of history all going back to a simple shop that sold sweets and namkeen. That shop was just east of the present-day border with Pakistan in the small city of Bikaner in Rajasthan. The company now has almost 100 stores around the world and ships everywhere.

After expanding to Delhi in the 1950's and blowing up through the next few decades, the shop has stuck to its principles for the most part, still excelling with a good selection of sweets and namkeen. The menu has expanded somewhat, with more filling meal options, and the next time you are in Hyderabad, you can even stay at the boutique hotel that the company opened in Banjara Hills.

Pea samosa plate ($2.99, hard pass)

Despite its gloss, Bikanervala still sticks to an informal format. Small portions are served on disposable paper plates. Plastic cutlery is provided nearby. Place your order at the counter and wait for the robotic voice to call your number and say "Please take the meal."

While waiting, browse through their packaged goods section, just a taste of what you can have shipped just about anywhere in case you ever find yourself long distances from a branch.

At a normal dinner time, the bird's nest-like wonder tokri chaat was unavailable but the cashier recommended raj kachori ($7.99, above) as a stand-in. This worked pretty well, with all the flavors and crunchy textures you need from chaat. While in other parts of India, kachori is a spicy snack on its own, in Delhi it is usually served as a chaat dish, the namesake on top as a sweetened wet bread to add another layer than usual.

Having noticed the nightly special of a paneer kati roll, and many other dishes including cheese, this dairy product seemed to be a theme of the offerings. In this spirit and as a reason to get some naan ($2.99, below back), a bowl of paneer butter masala ($9.99, below) was added.

The butter masala had a nice and proper amount of heat to it and hit the spot, although the thin naan was unfortunately a bad companion. It will probably be a more wise move to stick to namkeen dishes on future visits and supplement these with orders from the large sweets case.

After all, this is the bread and butter of Bikanervala.

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JERSEY CITY New Jersey

815 Newark Avenue

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Sweetness USA

PAKISTAN 🇵🇰

Sweetness USA is a place for everyone. Pakistani businessmen come in for takeout on their way home from work. Groups of women come together to buy food for their families. Another sits alone and charges her phone while screaming into a video chat. Solo male diners watch videos with one hand while eating with the other. Cab drivers are constantly double-parked on Coney Island Avenue while grabbing specials from the steam table.

While it is easy to be satisfied one dish at a time, bring a group with you and order a feast. As it becomes clear the amount of food you need, the men that run the place will start to show you a lot of attention, upping their levels of hospitality and happy to answer questions from the unfamiliar.

The previous establishment in this location was the Indian chain Mithaas, which has multiple locations in New Jersey and one in Long Island but no more in New York City. The meaning of this word is something close to "sweetness" in both Hindi and Urdu, so it was without much change that the new proprietors shifted only a tiny bit.

A meal here should be a hodgepodge of what you see and what you don't. The steam table offers the daily meals, which most patrons come in to order fast. But there are things listed on the menu behind the counter that might warrant attention as well. These could take up to 15 or 20 minutes to arrive, but if you do not have your yellow cab shift to get back to, hanging around is not so unpleasant.

On Google Maps, there seemed to be an unusually high percentage of photos of the mix grill sizzler ($12.99, above), a dish that indeed comes sizzling and requires that lead time. The mix of chicken and beef kebabs is combined with chicken tikka and fresh onions. Each bite of every type was greeted with their wonderful marinade.

The haleem ($6, below) here is prepared with barley, lentils, and chicken, and tastes like it has been cooking and improving for days. It is full of deep flavors and chilies, and perfection could legally be described as scooping some of it up with their freshly baked naan ($1).

Definitely worth an order, and what unlocks a bottle of mint yogurt sauce arriving at the table, is the chicken polao ($5.99, below), which always seems to be ready and something of a special of the house.

What sets polao, or pulao, or pilaf apart from biryani of course is the cooking method. Meats and spices are cooked separately from the rice, resulting in a lighter and more subtly spiced dish. It was agreed around the table that the version here was top notch.

The orders continued but even so it was impossible to try everything like their different types of chaat, or kati and paratha rolls which would have made excellent solo snacks.

A full tray of tikka drumsticks ($2 each, below) looked so tempting that one was ordered for each person at the table. These somehow were even better than they looked, the meat pulled off the bone without effort while remaining so moist. The marinades were just as satisfying as they were on the sizzling plate.

After seeing how well they prepared the chicken dishes here, next visits will have to include the full chicken Lahori charga ($14.99, not shown), a full bird marinated overnight and deep fried in oil.

Another table favorite was beef nihari ($6, below), a deep-colored stew that tasted rich with bone marrow. This slightly spicy dish originated with Muslims in India but is now popular throughout the Islamic regions of the subcontinent like Pakistan, where it is always on any self-respecting menu.

Add some curry to your repertoire with the goat curry ($6, below), another deep and rich ride. What they describe as an "exotic blend" is pretty much as you would expect from a Pakistani curry, with hunks of tender goat that must have been simmered for just the right amount of time.

And what would a place called Sweetness USA be without a huge selection of treats? Most of the display cases in the restaurant are used for an overwhelming amount of desserts, while branded boxes are stacked and ready to be filled with whatever you desire.

The proprietor steered the group toward a slice of their mango cake, which he described as the house special, but an assortment of treats like the one below was much more interesting. The cake itself was fairly simple and did not warrant the moniker of special.

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MIDWOOD Brooklyn
1150 Coney Island Avenue

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Khampa Kitchen Inn

TIBET 🏴󠁣󠁮󠀵󠀴󠁿

Besides some words on an area message board, Khampa Kitchen has lived most of its year of life relatively quietly. The dining room offers the same thing, separated from noisy Roosevelt Avenue and the 7 train above by a small room that acts as a vestibule. Half of this space is dedicated to jewelry and other handicrafts in a room that can be unlocked by the proprietor if you wish to see more.

But head on towards the smells coming from the kitchen, named for the people and region that spanned Eastern Tibet and Western Sichuan but today is just grouped in with the rest of Tibet. This was not always the case, as they speak a different language and have different customs than the Tibetans from Lhasa.

As if to just make sure customers coming in for generalized Tibetan food, whatever that is, will not be disappointed, the menu is full of decently executed dishes like chicken momos ($6.99, above), These have a thicker than normal wrapping, are full of the usual spices, and certainly enjoyable.

But we are in Khampa Kitchen Inn, after all, so it is worth getting familiar with the people and some of their unique contributions. Any scholar of the 1959 Tibetan uprising will know the region of Kham and its people had a very different role to play in the events leading up to it, differences that today might be erased by usage of "Tibetan" for an entire region and people.

One easy way to see this through cuisine is with the paoze ($11.99, above), similar in shape to the momo but made with a wrapper closer in flavor and texture to tingmo (called trinmo here). These are traditionally served with a flavorless bowl of rice soup. Khampa horsemen would traditionally eat these with yak meat, but here in Queens they are available in vegetable, pork, chicken, or beef versions.

Also highly recommended by the Khampa server was fried beef ribs ($10.99, below), heavily fatty chunks of bone-on meat flavored with oils and dried chili peppers. While it takes a while to eat, this dish is full of distinct flavors and worth the effort.

Another stand out Khampa dish is the beef with green pepper ($9.99, above), which is also served with a fresh and hot piece of trinmo. This is another Himalayan dish that uses chili peppers as the vegetable rather than chopped up for spice, so be prepared for a little sweat to start on your brow.

A good pairing for all the spice about to be in your life is a nice bowl of bhoethuk, a thick noodle soup here called Lhasa noodle ($6.99, below). This is only served with beef, a theme of dishes here as it probably remains the closest option to replicate yak, with a subtle beef broth. Throw in a little bit of the chili oil, but keep this as your safe place when your eyes are tearing up with other dishes.

One very unique dish, and an introduction to what may be presented on special occasions, is Khampa poethek ($12.99, above and below), a kind of meat pie that will require about a 30 minute lead time. The beautifully made pastry will arrive with the top already cut, but this would normally happen after everyone was seated.

If you were the guest of honor at someone's house, the top piece would be used as a little plate. The fillings, here seen with beef, would be piled high on the crisp disc and handed to whomever would be the person to impress.

Presented to the guest of honor.

With excellent hospitality and obvious pride in their cuisine, it is not too much of a stretch to imagine your group as the guests of honor after a feast here at Khampa Kitchen Inn.

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JACKSON HEIGHTS Queens
75-15 Roosevelt Avenue

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LakFood

MALDIVES 🇲🇻
SRI LANKA 🇱🇰

Through enough contact with Sri Lankan cuisines, and sometimes those of southern Indian states, a crucial ingredient always seems to be Maldive fish. Without doing the proper preparations, one might wander in and look for this over ice or in the freezer, but recently it was stumbled upon on the shelves of a Sri Lankan grocery store just off of Hillside Avenue in Jamaica, Queens a bit beyond the final stop of the F train.

This is its natural state, for tradition dictates that the flesh of the fish, in this case skipjack tuna, is smoked and dried by the sun before being cut into small pieces. This manner of preparation allows the small pieces to retain a very long shelf life and was used long before there was electricity.

The "chips" actually come out of the jar looking like small wood chips (below), and are certainly not meant for satisfying a late night snack crave. In the cuisines of the Maldives and Sri Lanka, the Maldive fish is used similarly to how dried shrimp paste is used from Myanmar to Malaysia, as a concentrated base of taste. A typical purchase (somewhere near the Indian Ocean, but not in Queens) would usually be a large filet that has been smoked and sun dried whole, taken home like a piece of wood, and then broken apart as needed in the kitchen.

In addition to these, LakFood stocks an array of other ingredients necessary for any Sri Lankan kitchen, as well as some homemade foods brought in on weekends. Since this visit took place on a Saturday, a case full fried fish and vegetable cutlets (rolls) were inviting, as well as the onion (seeni sambol) or fish filled triangular buns (below).

Inside the seeni sambol bun.

In front of this case were single portions of lamprais, string hoppers, and chicken curry, all made in the same home and only available on Saturday and Sunday.

A roam through the three aisles here is also fun, many dried goods share the shelves with bottles of liquids and the refrigerators are full of plenty to explore. The spicy cocktail snack below was delicious, full of what you might expect from looking at it, but also with chewy sweet raisins to counteract the good heat it brings.

The only disappointment of the day.

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JAMAICA Queens
88-01 182nd Place

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