The Rashbehari Avenue and Hindustan Road crossing. The pavement outside another newly opened Paris-inspired café. Time: A scorching summer evening when the temperature is 35ºC and rising. Scene: A constantly revolving ring of customers around three street side momo stalls, putting away with gusto big bowls of steaming soup with momos on the side.
There are momo vends and shacks everywhere — in south, central and north Calcutta and even the suburbs that make up greater Calcutta. Street side stalls, standalone restaurants, franchisee chains with kiosks at metro stations. According to the food aggregator apps, there are 173 outlets across Calcutta offering momos, four of them vegetarian.
Another five outlets offer only the refined, petite dim sums. This is over and above the many momo outlets on Momo Gully — Suburban Hospital Road in Bhowanipore where Calcutta’s love affair with the momo began, most likely in the 1980s — who have refused to join aggregator apps. To put it in context, there are 177 outlets on the app that offer biryani, that most popular of dishes. And 81 outlets offer rolls, the favourite snack of Calcuttans.
The momo shops on Rashbehari Avenue are neither very old nor very famous but they do brisk business. The Rinku Momo Stall, on the Hindustan Road crossing, is better known for its soup than its momo. An egg drop soup with finely sliced vegetables, it tastes much better than the momos, which are stuffed with boneless chicken pieces rather than mince. The stall selling momos at Exide More is reputed to serve the best momos in the city throughout the day, every day, all seasons. The nondescript momo stalls outside Jatin Das Metro station can barely make space for the thronging customers, mostly students of Asutosh College. The momo stall in front of Motijheel Science College in north Calcutta gives stiff competition to its neighbour that sells chowmein and chops. Even the Cha and Chops teashop on Dumdum Road has momos on its menu.
The cha and momo connect isn’t as farfetched as it seems. In Nepal, momos are also called momocha and share a social duty with tea. “Just like Bengalis have addas flavoured with cups of tea, Nepalis gather around momos for convivial chats,” says Jalpaiguri-based Saibal Bose. Bose made acquaintance with the momo during his many biking trips in Kalimpong and Sikkim. “It was their staple breakfast,” he says.
They are a staple of Nepali food, especially that of the Newar community who are traditionally traders. And with them it travelled to Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Sikkim. A stream of momos also arrived with Tibetan refugees and became popular in places where they settled — Majnu ka Tila in Delhi, Bylakuppe in Karnataka, Darjeeling and, later, Calcutta in West Bengal.
“A meat-filled momo has to be eaten whole, as the flavourful juice in its steamed pocket will dribble out if it is broken,” writes Jyoti Pathak in her book Taste of Nepal. She must not have met the three-inch momos served in Momo Gully, where the first momos were sold by a Tibetan couple.
“The size of a momo usually differs from family to family,” Doma Wang of the Blue Poppy Thakali restaurant tells The Telegraph; it is located in a building next to Sikkim House on Middleton Street. Wang, who grew up in Kalimpong, started her culinary career supplying momos from a cloud kitchen before that word was even invented. She credits her father, who was a school principal and owned a noodle factory, with inspiring her love for cooking.
A lot of posh restaurants put the delicate dim sum on the menu rather than the plebian momo, but not Blue Poppy. Continues Wang, “My father always told me to make small delicate ones.” Wang serves four types of momos — steamed, kothey, fried and jhol — vegetable, chicken or pork. Kothey is a lightly steamed momo that is fried on the underside while jhol momos are momos served in a tomato-based spicy soup.
The size of the momo is a tell. Tibetans consider momos a family meal while Nepali momos are street food. Early 20th-century Tibetologist Sir Charles Bell wrote that Tibetans had meat dumplings for lunch.
The farther one travels from Momo Gully the smaller the momos become. Even the frozen ones sold in bulk packs at Hamro Momo, supposedly the first shop to sell momos, are about half the size of the restaurant’s momos. The prices too rise, except at street stalls. All across Calcutta, momo stalls charge ₹60 for five or six chicken steam momos. Veg steam momos are even cheaper. And these are the only two varieties available.
Fried or pan-fried momos are Indian innovations,” says Shilbhadra Dutta, food enthusiast and visual artist. “I prefer the steamed momo. A plate of it is as good as a meal. I’d give the soup a miss though. It tastes like nyatar jal (rag-soaked water),” he adds. But there is a reason most Tibetan dishes are bland. “Your taste buds don’t work as well at an altitude,” writes Michael Buckley in his book Tibet.
The stuffings of momos changed to fit the makers. In Tibet it used to be yak meat or lamb. In Nepal it changed to buff or pork. A sweetish momo stuffed with pig brain is still a must at Lohsoong, the harvest festival in Sikkim. In North Bengal, “Himalayan Mongolian” folks, as Bose calls them, make delicious momos with squash, cabbage and, rarely, cauliflower florets. One factor for momos going vegetarian is definitely the cost.
“Momos are basically peasant food. The stuffings are whatever there are to hand,” says Bose. The seasonings are different combinations of onion, garlic, ginger and cilantro.
Michael Li, owner-chef of the restaurant Royal Jade in Kasba, near Ruby, is known to make a mean prawn momo on advance notice.
Wow Momo is one of the first chain of momo outlets in the country. According to Sagar Daryani who is CEO and co-founder of this Calcutta-based company, it’s not just Calcutta; his chain sells 10 lakh momos every day across India.
