Zhego NYC

The Butter and Momos of Bhutan, at Zhego | The New Yorker

"On my first visit to Zhego, a new Bhutanese restaurant in Woodside, the tiny dining room was full, so I sat on the front porch and ordered something hot: cups of cloudy, warm butter tea, as salty as the sea, arrived quickly. The butter was made from cow’s milk rather than yak—Sonam Tshering Singye explained imports are too costly, though many dry goods come from Bhutan—and the tea was an excellent introduction to the role of dairy here; Singye also brought a small dish of butter mixed with puffed rice and sugar for a crunchy, slightly fudgy snack. The restaurant’s azay, as interpreted by chef Tobden Jamphel, combines fresh green chili, cilantro, tamarillo, and feta (used as a stand-in for Bhutanese farmer’s cheese), and feta anchors many vegetarian dishes: melted into a creamy sauce for ema datsi (green chili), kewa datsi (potato), and shamu datsi (oyster mushrooms), or left firmer and caramelized in gongdo datsi with eggs, butter, and dried red chili; mozzarella with cabbage and cilantro fills momos, and beef momos release a fragrant, flavorful broth. To temper the heat there are cool buttermilk cups in warm months and jaju (a milk-based soup with spinach) when it’s colder, along with beautifully mottled steamed red rice and cheese-free options; other highlights include puta (buckwheat noodles with scrambled egg, chives, onions, and Sichuan peppercorn), goep paa (waffled, chewy tripe braised with ginger, dried red chili, and spring onions), and stir-fries of air-dried beef (shakum) or pork (sikum) with green beans, dried red chili, ginger, and tomato, or served in a feta-based broth. To finish there’s an off-menu doma pani—a plastic baggie of betel leaves, a tiny packet of neon-orange slaked lime, coconut chips, and half a betel nut—which produced one of the wildest, rapidly shifting flavor sensations I’ve experienced and left a hard lump in my throat; while I can’t recommend the nut itself because it’s a proven carcinogen and potentially addictive, that ritual is part of why I wholeheartedly recommend Zhego as a portal to another way of life. (Dishes $9.50–$16.99.)" - Hannah Goldfield