The mantle of ‘Indian’ food, in itself a disservice to the discrete regional cuisines of our country, has cast a long shadow on all food originating from South Asian countries.
It is common to see Nepali, Pakistani and Bangladeshi restaurants in the US and the UK advertise their food as ‘Indian’ to attract Western palates that are used to set menus of cream-laden, orange-hued curries and naan ‘breads’.
It took the conviction of a Bangladeshi woman to eschew this path, and make a mark in the fiercely competitive culinary scene in the New York metropolitan area, by doling out what she knows best — authentic Bengali food redolent with nostalgia.
Fish curry at Korai Kitchen Photo: Alisha Rana
Run by a mother-daughter duo, Korai Kitchen in Jersey City has carved a niche by focussing on home-style Bengali food. The intimate restaurant, run by an all-female crew, is always buzzing with customers who happily tuck into a wholesome meal that encompasses bhortas (mash of various vegetables, lentils and fish) and fragrant fish and meat curries cooked in Bangla style, the cuisine of Bengalis who trace their roots to what is now Bangladesh.
Nur-E Gulshan Rahman, the 62-year-old proprietor and chef, learned to cook from her mother in Dhaka, and diligently replicated the traditional recipes for her family every day, after relocating to the US East coast decades ago. Over the years, Nur-E has helmed various business operations, including making designer buttons and running a convenience store for 13 years.
In 2016, she opened the New Hilsa Grocery Store, from which she sources the fish and meat that is cooked in the restaurant everyday.
Nur-E is the sole chef in Korai Kitchen, and makes it a point to serve the food she ate in Bangladesh. Her menu does not include other Bengali staples such as shukto (vegetable medley studded with bitter gourd) or poshto (poppy seed) dishes.
What she does make, however, can warm even the most critical Bengali’s heart —muri ghonto (fish head curry rice), kumro chingri (pumpkin and shrimp), dimer dalna (egg curry), mangshor jhol (mutton curry) and, of course, maacher jhol (fish curry) featuring rohu or hilsa fish.
Taste of home
What a typical lunch at Korai Kitchen looks like Photo: Alisha Rana
The food is served buffet style, and is as comforting as eating in your mother’s kitchen, an experience that an immigrant like myself has been deprived of for years. And it is not just the desi immigrant community that is drawn to Korai Kitchen; patrons from across cultures relish it as well. The restaurant has garnered a perfect five-star rating on Yelp, high praise indeed from the notoriously unforgiving customers of the New York Tri-State area.
The evening I spent chatting with the mother-daughter team, Nur-E flitted in and out of the kitchen, keeping a sharp eye over the staff as they prepared milky tea and set the stage for her.
A customer had requested shorshe ilish ( hilsa cooked in mustard gravy), and she deftly fried the oily fish in a small korai , before cooking it in the mustard gravy. The resulting dish looked and smelled exactly like how my own mother would have made it, and when I tell the chef that, she beams with joy. Nur-E’s eyes crinkle in merriment when I ask her about heading a women-run establishment. “ Ora beshi advice dite chae (the men try to give me unasked for advice),” she laughs.
Nur-E Gulshan’s goat curry Photo: Alisha Rana
Nur-E Farhana Rahman, the charming 31-year-old hostess of Korai Kitchen, runs the restaurant along with her mother, turning away from a career in management consulting to support her mother’s dream project. Farhana tells me that she grew up taking the multi-course meals her mother would make every night at the dinner table for granted. “It wasn’t till I went to my friends’ place that I realised dinner for them was a one-pot dish of pasta or the likes,” she said.
Farhana, appreciative of her mother’s efforts in hindsight, takes meticulous care to explain each dish to American customers or others who have never partaken of the cuisine. She explains the ingredients, the cooking method and the order in which the different dishes are eaten, as a traditional Bengali meal would start with something teto (bitter), and end on a mishti (sweet) note. “We are not serving anything that I didn’t eat growing up,” Farhana said. “It is like having a meal at our home.”
Korai Kitchen opened its doors in February last year, and strong word-of-mouth eventually led to a glowing review even from TheNew York Times . Being proudly regional has worked out for Nur-E Gulshan, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.
