If you walk by the newish Findlay Market food stand Bridges a bit too quickly, relying only on your eyes to be your guide, it’s easy to confuse the fare — including golden-brown samosas — as being from India. But owner/operator Ashak Chipalu and his mother Rose Chipalu, who does all of the cooking, invite you to take a closer look and taste the food of their native country, Nepal.
We recently spoke by phone with Ashak to find out more about Nepalese food and his family’s background.
CityBeat: I know that Nepalese cuisine is similar to Indian food, but what makes it different?
Ashak Chipalu: As another South Asian country, we use the same kind of spices — cumin, coriander, turmeric, salt, garlic and ginger — but the way we use them is a little different, and we also use milder spices. People have tried Indian food — it’s very popular in Cincinnati and all over the United States — but when people try our food, they always say it is milder in taste and it’s got more flavor, and it’s not as heavy as Indian food.
CB: Besides samosas, what else do you serve?
AC: Our staple food back home in Nepal is rice. We always eat rice at least once or twice a day. So we are serving rice with chicken tikka masala, which is grilled and marinated chicken; it’s got a smoky flavor. We are also serving a lentil soup. It’s a mixed yellow-lentil soup that goes over the rice, and we top it off with the chicken tikka masala topped with fresh cilantro. And we also have potato curry for the vegetarian folks.
For dessert, we are serving a creamy rice porridge that is called kheer. It’s scented with clarified butter, cinnamon and cardamom, and it’s got a light flavor and creamy texture.
We’re serving our samosas as well, different flavors; we have potato and cheese; potato, cheese and bacon; and chicken tikka masala with rice. We serve those with our sweet and sour sauce. The samosa with bacon is not typical of Nepal; we improvised on that one. I was talking to my friend Jessica about how I should make the samosas different and unique, and she said, “Why don’t you add bacon?” So we tried it, and it was so good.
CB: What brought your family to the United States?
AC: I moved here when I was 19 years old to go to nursing school. I started working in multiple places in the restaurant industry because I was really connected with food. Since I was 20 years old, I had a vision that I wanted to do something in food, and also we had two restaurants back home that we were operating, so we had a background in food. My mom moved here because of the Nepalese earthquake last April.
CB: Your mom, Rose, does all of the
cooking. What’s her background?
AC: We’re originally from the Newari Tribe in Nepal. Food is huge in my community and my culture. We cook every day with fresh products. We have a lot of festivals back home in Nepal, and we celebrate that with food. And people love my mom’s cooking and really enjoy it, and I find myself very lucky to be her son and to eat what she cooks. Her mom was also a really good cook, and she learned everything by herself, watching, and from joint families.
CB: How did you come up with the name Bridges?
AC: My mom chose the name. There are a lot of people who don’t know about South Asian cuisine — people who haven’t tried the spices — they’re blown away by the taste. The main reason we chose “Bridges” is that we want to bridge the gap. My mom thought about the name when we were driving across a bridge. The world is becoming a smaller place now, everyone is traveling, and we want to contribute to the globalization with food and make people aware and educate them.
BRIDGES serves at Findlay Market on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, as well as at Urban Artifact brewery in Northside on Wednesday and Thursday. More info: 513-374-9354 or findlaymarket.org/merchants/bridges.
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This article appears in Dec 16-22, 2015.