Where cabbies hold key to best curries
IF YOU WANT TO FIND NEW YORK’S BEST KEBABS, YOUR BEST BET IS TO FOLLOW THE CITY’S LEGENDARY TAXI DRIVERS
Richly seasoned lamb curry, chana masala and saag paneer fill the chafing dishes. Cases display confections like gulab jamun and rasgulla, sweet milk and cheese dumplings. Overhead a television broadcasts images of Bollywood stars.
These features so define Pakistani and Bangladeshi restaurants in New York City that, at first glance, such places appear almost indistinguishable But make no mistake: Everyone has a favourite.
For goat pulao, Amanet Khan, a taxi driver of 25 years, goes to Lahori Chilli, on a stretch of Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn known as Little Pakistan. The dish is also a favourite at Chandni, a floor above the Ar-Rahman mosque in Manhattan. Go a few blocks east to Haandi in Curry Hill for lamb nihari, a stew of slow-cooked shanks and bone marrow.
Jackson Heights, Queens, a few drivers say, is where to get beef Bihari kebab, either at Dera or Kababish, where meat sits on a charcoal grill with spices boiling underneath. By quirk of demographics, taxi drivers will be at any of these South Asian restaurants. According to New York City officials, about 62,000 people in the five boroughs identify as Bangladeshi, and about 51,000 as Pakistani. Of the 148,168 drivers licensed by the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission in 2015, 19,354 reported that they came from Bangladesh; 12,536 from Pakistan.
Most takeout places are halal, which means that the food is prepared according to Islamic guidelines, as Pakistan and Bangladesh are Muslim-majority countries. And most are open 24/7 to accommodate drivers on different schedules.
At any hour, South Asian Americans will be gathered, eating, drinking chai, talking of family, work and politics, with the names Uber, Trump and Sharif popping up in conversations in Urdu, Bengali and English. After all, with some recipes having survived immigration to America and the bloody partition of Pakistan and India 70 years ago, politics have a way of creeping into conversation. But really, it’s all about the food.
Haandi, Manhattan, midnight
It was a summer Tuesday evening at Haandi, and 20-somethings drifted in for a midnight snack of pakora. A model from Karachi, eating chicken biryani, complained of dating ABCDs — American-born confused Desis. Drivers, their cabs and cars lining Lexington Avenue outside, rotated in and out on break.
Seven days a week, Khan drives his cab, from 5pm to around 2am. He makes $4,000 (Dh14,687) to $4,500 a month depending on the season, which is really more like $1,400 to $1,900 after he’s subtracted payments for his medallion lease and money sent to his ex-wife and three children in Lahore. This has been the arrangement for almost 15 years: them there, him here. (Though, happily, he reported a new marriage here.)
Dispatching about 64,000 cars every day, Uber and other ride-hailing apps have squeezed the taxi business (more than 17,000 yellow and green cabs are on the road today). But Khan, as an oldschool yellow-cab driver, said he can keep up with the competition because he intimately knows the streets, compared to drivers who use ride hailing apps, who often depend heavily on GPS.
“If I’m going from downtown, uptown, then cross uptown, east to west,” he said, “I take First Avenue to uptown, then cross at 93rd Street, where there’s less traffic, and the light is open, one by one by one by one.”
Lahori Chilli, Brooklyn, 3pm
Inside Lahori Chilli sat Shakeel Baig, 40, a driver for Uber and Juno who lives in Jamaica, Queens, while he supports his wife and five children in Lahore. Eating chickpeas and yoghurt, he complained that Uber has cut its fares twice — by about 20 per cent in 2014, then 15 per cent in 2016.
“It completely affects everything,” he said. “Before I would put 60 hours, you know. I was very happy. Now I put 80 hours.”
Dera and Kababish, Queens, 8pm
The three-quarters of the tables at Dera were full on a recent rainy Friday night, with families coaxing their children to eat more beef nihari, another forkful of chicken biryani.
Faisal Mohammad, 32, an auditor who lives in Manhattan, and Nasra Jahir, an Indian flight attendant, were there on a first date. They met through Shaadi.com, an Indian matchmaking website where profiles are often perused by singles and their parents alike. Asked what caught his eye about Jahir, Mohammad said: “I thought she was beautiful. And she is.”
Mohammad Saif Ullah, 50, who also owns another Dera in Curry Hill (Lexington Avenue between 27th and 28th streets), bought this one in 2004. He arrived in New York seeking political asylum from Pakistan in 1991, after a conservative Muslim party won power. His sapphire ring and rose-gold watch are remnants of his profession during his early years in New York — a jeweller. He didn’t cook then, or now, but that didn’t make him doubt his ability to run restaurants. “I know the taste,” he said.