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As the leaves begin to fall and the nights dip into the forties, many of us start to crave autumn harvest delicacies like sweet potato, pumpkin, and squash. Would it surprise you to learn that these are staples of the "mountain cooking" of the Himalayas?
You don't need a sherpa or oxygen tank to enjoy this spicy, stick-to-your-ribs cuisine. Right here in Porter Square, Annapurna restaurant offers the high altitude dishes of Nepal, Tibet, and Afghanistan. Located at the corner of Walden Street and Massachusetts Avenue, Annapurna took over a spot that had once been an Indian restaurant, and there is a close kinship between Indian and Tibetan food. The menu still sports familiar Indian dishes like chicken tikka masala, and diners are greeted upon being seated with a complimentary cup of yellow lentil soup and basket of papadum. The three chutneys on the table are familiar to anyone who has been to an Indian restaurant, as well.
The yellow lentil soup is the perfect starter, taking the edge off the chill you brought in from outside, and the mildly spiced dish stimulates your taste buds for more. My dining companion and I steered our choices to the "mountain" side of the menu, opting for more soup to start with. We shared a bowl of green peas soup, which was intensely green and flavored more of spring snap pea then the expected split pea, and a Nepali pumpkin soup, which was everything autumn should taste like. Unlike the cloying, sweet preparations of pumpkin found in many Western cuisines, this was a pureed flavor revelation, bringing out the natural sweetness of the pumpkin and chasing with a finish of cilantro.
We followed with some appetizers: chicken momo (dumplings) from Tibet, aushak from Afghanistan, and the grilled eggplant dish known as banjan. The momo were intensely garlicky, while the heavy spice and fat of the ground meat in the aushak was offset by the light yogurt and mint sauce they were served in. The same was true of the banjan. The slices of eggplant were fall-apart soft and laden with flavorful oil, topped with the palate cleansing yogurt and mint.
For a main dish we chose pumpkin again, opting for a curry known as "farsi ra." The only disappointment of the meal was that although the server had asked if we wanted it mild, medium, or hot, as we chose mild, the dish was on the edge of too spicy for me to eat. I am a spice-lover and have a high tolerance, so I enjoyed the dish with plenty of rice and naan, but my companion could not eat it at all. As it turns out, our eyes were larger than our stomachs anyway, and the rich, filling cuisine of the Himalayas had pretty much filled us to the brim by that point, anyway. I enjoyed a cup of hot, milky chai before we went back out into the cold.
All told, our bill for two, minus alcohol, came in under $50. On a Wednesday night it was not crowded, but not empty. We were one of four tables that had been seated around 7:30. The chef-owner of the restaurant, Brihaspati Lama, is a Cambridge resident and before opening Annapurna cooked for the Dalai Lama for thirteen years. A photograph of the Dalai Lama smiles benevolently from the wall by the kitchen and you will feel blessed to eat at Annapurna on a chilly autumn night.
Annapurna website: http://www.annapurna2088.com/
Annapurna Restaurant
2088 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02140
5 blocks north of the Porter Square T station
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