Did you know that Toronto features a “Taste of Banglatown” every year in the fall? OMG I have found my heaven. Granted it’s March now but this next fall I will make sure to visit. It occurs off the Danforth, sort of between Main Street and Pharmacy Av, which is the region that is a hub for Bengali/Bangladeshi people for decades. The number of restaurants has soared recently, giving the people of Toronto so many options. For example if you wanted to try the nation fish of Bangladesh, hilsa (ilish) you could go to Wondall and get the shorshe ilish. Fish with mustard paste and green chilies.

 Apparently, there’s a new restaurant that’s slated to open in April called Jhol. Now for non-Banga speakers jhol often means gravy, or that’s how I like to translate it. And gravy for all you non Indian subcontinent people is the delicious sauce that almost always accompanies any curry dish. I know in western culture gravy is this brown sauce created from poultry drippings and a few additional flavors, but Jhol…Jhol makes my heart sing and my tongue happy. Jhol makes me get out of bed in the morning. It is the very essence of deliciousness.

Now speaking of Tandoori, there’s another favourite in Bangla Town called Red Hot. This place is on my bucketlist, it’s been too long since I’ve had real Tandoori. I was speaking with my friend, someone who does not have an ounce of Bangledeshi blood in her veins about tandoori. Mainly tandoori chicken. She had no idea that traditionally tandoor ovens are made of clay and typically (at least back home) use charcoal or wood as the heating source. You can use them to cook basically anything, but Vera was surprised when I said that homes typically do not have them in their kitchen. This is a main difference between a western and bangla kitchen, we don’t have ovens. It’s just too hot to want to have a heat source inside the home.

I’ll have you know that I also have worked in the bangla restaurant scene. Right at the start of covid I got a job at a now defunct restaurant off of Queen Street called Adda Bistro. I was lucky to get a job at this time because of the Covid lockdown. I started at the very bottom, working as their dishwasher. It was such a hard time for restaurants, our head chef was stuck in Hyderabad and the other cook who had a French background!) would communicate with him via whatsapp. Well, that cook didn’t last long and soon I was promoted to cook! Kitchens are no joke and it was a hard time overall. I’ll save some stories for next time, but needless to say I perfected my paratha making while I was there!