Try the unique Tangra Chinese cuisine at The Food Safari

If you enjoy eating boiled jiaozi dumplings, semi-panfried gyoza or guo tieh dumplings (meat dumplings called pot stickers), you might just like the Tibetan-Nepalese version.

Called momo, this dish is part of the culinary landscape of Bengal in Eastern India. It is fatter than the Chinese or Japanese version and smeared with an appetizing spicy sauce. The dish was created by Tibetan-Nepalese working in the kitchens of Chinese restaurants in Calcutta, Bengal.

You can enjoy this dish at Fifth Season restaurants - Flavours of India at East Coast Road or Fifth Season Tangra Chinese Restaurant in Race Course Road.

You can see how this dish is prepared at The Food Safari. Mrs Depali Ray, owner and director of the two eateries will share recipes for momo, fish paturi (Bengalise fish dish) and kebab rolls.

Check out the booth of the two eateries too, to find out about the diversity of Bengal cuisine, which like Singapore, is a melting pot.

Apart from Indian and Bengal cuisines, you can also find Tangra Chinese and Tibetan fare in the cuisine of Bengal.

The Chinese started emigrating to West Bengal in the late 1700s. The Hakkas were the first wave with many working as port workers in Calcutta. The Chinese immigrants, who included Cantonese, later ran laundry and tannery businesses. Their cooks developed a distinctive variety of Chinese food that's adapted to the local palate.

Compared to Indian cuisine, Chinese food can be considered bland. So Cantonese-style sauces were jazzed up with sliced chillis and hot sauces. The result: unique dishes like Chilli Chicken and Vegetable Manchurian were created and spread to other parts of India.
 
With the decline in the traditional industries like tanneries and laundry shops, the Chinese took up other trades and moved to other parts of India, bringing with them Tangra Chinese cuisine.

It gave rise to a more popular form - Indian Chinese food, which is very popular in cities like New Delhi and Mumbai, and has spread to the West like America and the Middle East.

In India, Indian Chinese food is India's most popular cuisine after local food in each state, especially when people dine out.

Apart from the use of soy sauce and spring onions, Tangra Chinese food is flavoured with spices from the Indian kitchen - cumin, coriander, turmeric, chilli, yoghurt and two ingredients which are common in  both cuisines - garlic and ginger.

To Singaporeans familiar with spicy local food, they will find such flavourings similar. These spices are used in Malay, Indonesian, Perankan, Eurasian and Indian food.

Tangra Chinese food with chilli are usually hot, battered and fried. Any dish named Manchurian is likely to come with a sweet and salty brown sauce while one with a spicy red sauce would likely be called a Sichuan dish.

Chicken, fish, prawns and mutton dishes are widely available as beef and pork are taboo to Hindus and Muslims. They are used in sweet sour dishes, wantons, fried rice and fried noodles.

At Fifth Season - Flavours of India restaurants, you can find soy sauce, cut preserved green chilli on your table. Chopsticks are also available. They also engaged a Tangra Chinese chef (yup, a Chinese Indian national to do the cooking at the Race Course outlet).

The food is surprisingly delicious and more tasty than the authentic Chinese version, declared some guests at its East Coast outlet.

You can enjoy the Tibetan momos, either steamed or pan fried. They can be stuffed with chicken or vegetables. Another delicious starter is the lightly battered baby corn and fried in hot garlic sauce. Chicken Lollipop, now part of Indian snack repertoire, is a small crispy drumlet served with a spicy sauce.

Many of the dishes have vegetarian or meat version. Like the sweet sour Manchow Soup, Sweet Corn Soup and Hot and Sour Soup, a Sichuan origin that is part of the Chinese restaurant menu in Chinese cities.

For a hearty and spicy soup with noodles and minced chicken, the Tibetan Thukpa.

Chicken and fish are done in chilli, sweet sour, Manchurian and Sichuan styles. The latter contains a blend of Indian spices and Sichuan flavours, from the use of hot bean paste, pickled Sichuan chilli and Sichuan pepper.

The pepper salt mix, which usually accompanies roast chicken here, is tossed with fish. If you prefer your fish to be wet, there's one with a chilli oyster sauce.

As for fillers, there are Hakka-style fried chowmein noodles, Cantonese-style fried noodles with a gravy, Chinese fried rice, Sichuan fried rice, using Indian Basmati rice of course.

Our overall verdict: We felt quite at home with the dishes. Some said they're more tasty than the usual Chinese style.

Check out this special cuisine at The Food Safari and Fifth Season restaurants.

Fifth Season -Flavours of India restaurant in East Coast Road
#419, East Coast Rd,
Singapore 200987
Tel: 6346 1550
Located a few doors away from the new location of Al Forno Italian Restaurant
Diagonally opposite the old location of Al Forno and Margarita's.

Fifth Season Tangra Chinese Restaurant in Race Course Road