There are a lot of places called Chayhana around (means teahouse). So to avoid confusion I gave the address. I have not been to Nargis for many years. I know it is popular, but I think the menu is too large. The place above specializes in plov. And they do it very well.
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The Nargis that was on Coney Is. Ave was, in my opinion, excellent for quite awhile. The one they opened in Park Slope was more than good enough but not quite as good. Now that both of these are gone, their newish location (that replaced a Belarusian place that I really liked) is far below anything they used to serve.
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the featured plov picture looks ample to say the least on their google maps entry. Seems worth checking out.
We had many great meals at the old Nargis. The new one is fancier, darker, smaller dishes but not smaller prices. It feels more like a Russian nightclub. Not the type I want for Uzbek. I can use a good replacement of the old Nargis
MANHATTAN TASHKENTâŚSECOND VISIT:
MUCH more crowded on a Friday at 1:30 than it had been a few days before and a few hours earlier. But not uncomfortably so. Very kind and helpful staff.
Immediately spied the chicken plov (not in the plov section, but the mixed buffet section) and bought a big, round container filled to the top. ($14.00) That will be dinner tonight, so by tomorrow I will know whether or not to thank Ziggy for a delicious dinner.
Could not resist the large glass jar âbaked yogurtâ from Pennsylvania, as Iâd never seen that before, but when I got it home and tasted (added strawberries and hot honey for lunch), found that although the color is light brown, it tastes like regular yogurt and is not particularly thick. Good, though. Full fat, thank goodness.
Also bought half a round of pastry filled with spinach; will snack on later today.
Another hefty slice of that garish-green-colored cake with cream and cherries for tonightâs dessert.
Another Borodinsky bread @ $2.49 for the loaf. Iâm really getting to like this bread; one toasted slice for breakfast, smeared with the last remnants from last jar of the pistacchio crema I brought home from Catania, topped with labne, and a sprinkle with the vanilla salt I found at Kalyustan to replace the astonishingly great Tahitian Vanilla salt that The Meadow no longer carries due to how expensive vanilla has become. (Iâve written quite a few e-mails asking if they have this in stock and the answer has always been a big disappointment; that salt was very expensive but so worth the splurge and Iâve tried, and failed, to find anything remotely as good)
Container of cut-up mango but not the top Alfonso/Champagne variety from Mexicoâthe less good Haitian mango. Did not realize this until I reached home and had a closer look.
The cheese pastry I kept calling Kashkavilli, after the cheese, is correctly named Khachapuri, but you all know probably that. I did not buy any today.
Spotted this but forgot to buy; looks good; next time.
Chicken Plov:
Pumpkin Samsa that I bought the first time:
One of my new favorite breads:
That beautiful green cake:
The spinach-filled pastry, for snacking later today:
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Greatly enjoying living vicariously through you, but you mean Ataulfo above, not that queen of mangoes, Alfonso.
Yes!! Once only I have tasted an Alfonso mango; the NY restaurant of the late Chef Floyd Cardoz (Iâve forgotten the name) had them on the menu for what seemed like a crazy price for one piece of fruit. I think it was an Alfonso; it was imported from India. We ordered one for the table. The ones at TASHKENT were Tommy-I noticed on the paper label when I opened the clamshell after a very good dinner of chicken plov.
Thank you, Ziggyâthe chicken plov was devoured by both of us. Rice was very tasty and the chicken was boneless but not overcooked.
I wish I had had a sauce to eat with itâmaybe a yogurt-based sauce or a hot sauce. (Is plov normally eaten with a sauce on the side?)
And thanks, food dabbler, for the correction! I always envy those people who say they get into the bathtub in India and gorge on mangoes, letting the juice run all over themselves.
The pieice of cake was too small for two of us!
I can appreciate mangos but have trouble eating them - contra @erica1 it seems that the very best mangos we normally get here are haitian mangos of the kidney shape and orange in color - similar to the champagne or afaulfo mangos from mexico but larger. They have a short season which should be around now and I used to pick them up for west indian friends at a sugar cane truck. (one parks across from the Brooklyn Costco) but I am sure they are available in Flatbush and other places in season. The large thicker mango which are green and red can be from either mexico or haiti and are not as good. I got a box of alfonsos from india at a store in Parsippany a few years back - they were very disappointing. and flavorless,. Probably an issue with shipping and storage
First Iâve heard of that! I come from a staider, more middle-class background. We had bucket-baths, not bathtubs.
My family bought a basket or two of unripe Alfonsos (from a town called Ratnagiri) at the start of every season, packed in straw. Every morning my mother would gently examine the contents and take out the ripest one or two to have after dinner.
Yes @JenKalb, I too have found alfonsos here an expensive let down. The champagne variety ones are usually reliably sweet, and fiber-free. Another sweet, low-fiber variety (but much harder to find) are Kents. If you see them, grab them.
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HaâŚYou mean all those novels and memoirs Iâve read by Indian authors are just inventing the âgorging on mangoes in the bathtubâ scenes?? I cannot imagine how heavenly it would be to be able to buy large baskets of delicious mangos!! I remember, in the CH days, people would go to Patel in Queens and split a basketâŚbut I canât imagine those mangoes, even if they came from India, would be as delicious as fresh ones IN India. The one I had at the Floyd Cardoz restaurantâit was named TABLAâwas disappointing.
I often buy frozen mango chunks at Costco or at Whole FoodsâŚtheyâre nothing like fresh but the taste is pretty good; I blend them with milk/yogurt, or eat them in a bowl topped with hot honey.
Glad you enjoyed. Hope you scooped enough veggies too. Scooping the proper chicken/rice/veggies/chickpeas ratio while someone waiting behind you making âtsâ sounds requires years of experience. The picture you posted is a little light on chicken.
I usually put some spicy sauce midway, tho Plov is usually eaten as is.
Yes, ZiggyâŚI filled the bottom of the container with the chicken, and I did scoop a good amount of vegetablesâŚit was delicious, but I do need to add some spicy sauce next time. The container cost, I think, $14 and it was more than enough for dinner for two people. One good thing about having so many dentist appts is that her office is around the corner from Tashkent!
BTWâŚAny travel plans in the near future for you??
Iâm with @fooddabbler here - I lived in India for many years and have never seen a bathtub there, even at the houses of my more affluent friends. We always had large buckets with smaller plastic pitchers to pour water on ourselves to bathe in a wet room. Now my parents have a shower in their wet room. Was the mangoes in a bathtub scene from a Vikram Seth novel? Itâs certainly an appealing idea!
Switzerland in August. Working on Basque Country in October. Starting with the French side this time
We had bathtubs (old building with colonial vestiges, and later for kids) but I donât want to think about what anyone would be doing with a mango to need to sit in one, lol.
The reference may be to J B S Haldane:
About your mango; you can eat it quite safely, if you just wait a moment while I enchant it so that it wonât splash over you.
âŚ
Mr Leakey ate a pear, and gave me the other five mangoes to take home. But I had to eat them in my bath because they werenât enchanted.
@JenKalb @erica1 Alphonsos have to go through a whole process (including irradiation) to come into the US, which does affect them. I used to get a direct delivery of 6 or 12 every season from India, and those were a lot better than the store ones. Expensive, but not that much more than fancy Asian pears, for eg, or specialty Japanese fruit. (And if there was bad fruit in the batch, they refunded per piece.)
Do you still order the mangos from India? I might like to do that, just to see what a fabulous, fabulous mango tastes likeâŚ
I think the characters in the books sat in the tub because the mangos were so juicy that they could eat them with abandon and not worry about getting it all over them (??). IF I donât bother to cube the Mexican ones, I cut each side away from the pit and eat with a spoon over my sink.
Even though I think those Ataulfos are delicious, Iâm getting the idea that Iâve never had a really first-rate mango. So I have to try to find some, somehow, short of traveling to India.
I think the only bit that gets messy for me is the section with the pit. This is considered by some in my family to be the most satisfying bit as you have to gnaw and suck the pit until it is almost white and dry like a bone. The mango juice can end up dribbling down oneâs arms with this effort!
I almost forgot to post that I picked up some lovely Dominican mangoes (same island as Haiti) from the sugarcane vendor today. They (if I can judge by the haitians I have eaten) are tender, flavorful and not as resinous tasting as some mangoes. They are also much larger than the ataulfos - I put a standard teaspoon in the picture to indicate the size.
The only time I have eaten mangoes voraciously was when I spent a summer in the USVI as a college student, the local mangoes (similar to these) were beautifully ripe and juicy. We at them without cutting them up and they did indeed drip quite a lot. I also got mango poisoning (I think it is from the black resin sometimes appearing on the skin) - my whole mouth area, inside and out broke out in inflamed bumps, I guess from chewing the meat off the skin. Dont do it, is all I can say! It along with the inferiority of most mangoes we get here and the resin flavor put me off them, tho I am enjoying it as the scent on these develops! Jim will get one and the rest I will give to my West Indian friends at church.
I was taught by my dad how to cut a mango to avoid getting irritation from the skin. Heâs very finicky about his mango cutting and peeling, uses a very sharp paring knife for the purpose. We can peel a mango taking just enough of the skin off so as not to waste any bit of the precious flesh. Then the peeled mango is cut into pieces and the prize for the person who did all the work of peeling and cutting is the inner bit with the pit inside.
That sounds awful, Jen. I had no idea that one could get a reaction from mangoes! Those you bought today look like they will be exceptional. But I need see anything like those here in midtown ManhattanâŚthe street-side fruit vendors sell only the usual. I did buy the absolute worst papaya of my life from Trader Joeâs about 10 days agoâŚnever had a papaya that was mealy inside. I had to throw the whole thing into the trash.
