{"id":42,"date":"2025-03-26T18:05:56","date_gmt":"2025-03-26T18:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tandoorifriedchicken.ca\/?p=42"},"modified":"2025-10-23T18:09:48","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T18:09:48","slug":"taste-of-banglatown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tandoorifriedchicken.ca\/index.php\/2025\/03\/26\/taste-of-banglatown\/","title":{"rendered":"Taste of Banglatown"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Did you know that Toronto features a \u201cTaste of Banglatown\u201d every year in the fall? OMG I have found my heaven. Granted it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Apparently, there\u2019s a new restaurant that\u2019s slated to open in April called Jhol. Now for non-Banga speakers jhol often means gravy, or that\u2019s 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\u2026Jhol 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.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A tandoor Oven<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Now speaking of Tandoori, there\u2019s another favourite in Bangla Town called Red Hot<\/a>. This place is on my bucketlist, it\u2019s been too long since I\u2019ve had real Tandoori. I was speaking with my friend<\/a>, 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\u2019t have ovens. It\u2019s just too hot to want to have a heat source inside the home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll 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\u2019t last long and soon I was promoted to cook! Kitchens are no joke and it was a hard time overall. I\u2019ll save some stories for next time, but needless to say I perfected my paratha making while I was there!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did you know that Toronto features a \u201cTaste of Banglatown\u201d every year in the fall? OMG I have found my heaven. Granted it\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tandoorifriedchicken.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tandoorifriedchicken.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tandoorifriedchicken.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tandoorifriedchicken.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tandoorifriedchicken.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tandoorifriedchicken.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55,"href":"https:\/\/tandoorifriedchicken.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions\/55"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tandoorifriedchicken.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tandoorifriedchicken.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tandoorifriedchicken.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tandoorifriedchicken.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}