Beyond momos: Meghalaya’s chefs are reclaiming the state’s culinary identity
When Ahmedaki Laloo was training to be a chef at Manipal University, she missed the taste of her home state, Meghalaya. “I would tell my
When Ahmedaki Laloo was training to be a chef at Manipal University, she missed the taste of her home state, Meghalaya. “I would tell my mom to send some pickles, fermented bamboo shoots, fish chutney, and condiments,” recalls the Shillong-born chef, who was recently in Chennai, as a part of Zhouyu Hosts, a culinary pop-up series that brings chefs from across India and Asia to the city. But, like other people from the Northeast, she often worried about what her peers would think of this food: “of people mocking us and saying that my food is stinky,” says Ahmedaki. And yet, something changed when she saw how proud her classmates and friends from other parts of the country were about their food. “They would flaunt it. And then, I realised that if I could have ghee and curry leaves, why couldn’t you eat our food?,” says Ahmedaki. The realisation had a profound impact on her. After she graduated and worked in several restaurants across the country and returned home in the winter of 2020 to establish A’Origins, a culinary enterprise that seeks to bring this region’s cuisine to the rest of the world. “I wanted to express myself and tell stories through food,” she says.
Like Ahmedaki, more and more chefs with roots in Meghalaya are opting to return to their culinary heritage, opening restaurants in their own state that explore indigenous cuisines in fresh and exciting ways, “bringing local cuisine to new light, doing something like what (Peruvian chef and restaurateur, founder of Lima) Virgilio Martínez has done with Peruvian food or (Italian chef and restaurateur, founder of Osteria Francescana) Massimo Bottura with Italian…taking a classic and elevating it to the next level,” says Shillong-based chef Reuben Sooting, the founder of Lady Aiko, India’s first integrated hotpot and Korean barbecue experience. In his opinion, this is a relatively recent phenomenon. “Even 10-12 years ago, the food scene in Shillong was so different. You didn’t have as many restaurants and cafes; on top of that, you never had anyone doing anything with local influences,” says Reuben, who believes that the government policy played an important role in facilitating the change. “The government is now very heavily focused on tourism, which includes our food,” he says. Ahmedaki agrees. “I am truly grateful that the government has been focusing on this. We have been able to express ourselves better because the number of footfalls is increasing every year,” she says.
For musician and entrepreneur Hammarsing Kharhmar, who co-founded Rynsan in Shillong with his wife, Riyaki Jana, the fact that tourists aren’t just coming to Shillong to “look at our beautiful hills and waterfalls or breathe this clean air” is a positive trend. “They’re saying that I want to eat our food, something that has changed in the last five or ten years,” says Hammarsing, who believes that people are finally beginning to recognise that Shillong isn’t the home of momo chow but instead has a rich, produce-forward food culture. “People are very interested in local cuisine, and this is filtering down, because I’ve seen a lot of new places opening up,” he points out. The emergence of restaurants like Rynsan, which are “telling their own stories, finding ways of articulating this identity that is at once local but also contemporary,” is indicative of a larger shift, according to former journalist and food writer Damini Ralleigh, the co-founder of Delhi’s Indicā, which, among other things, curates gastronomic experiences that highlight diverse food cultures. “For a very long time, cuisines have been looked at zonally, as if states are watertight compartments, with no fluidity across borders. But cultural borders are extremely porous, and those nuances get lost when you talk about cuisines in broad strokes,” she says.
The BriefWire