 I think momos are my favorite dumplings. I think momos are my favorite dumplings. Are my favorite like bao, like bao is the like thing. What's the most momos you can eat, man? These things are packing the meat. They're selling meat when I'm hungry, like a lot. What is it like to dive deep in a regional Tibetan cuisine, hit up a marketplace, an underground shop and the most popular food truck? Well, let's find out. What's going on everybody? Welcome to another Queens episode of the world and why today we're in Jackson Heights and we're gonna be trying authentic Tibetan food. Now, Andrew, we have done one Tibetan food video before but there are so many different regional cuisines, deep cuts, dishes we haven't tried and you know that we could not do this video without an authentic Tibetan friend so we got the plug with us, Tashi. Hi, everyone. I'm super excited to take you guys on this journey with me today. Queens has a really large population of Tibetan people. It's a really dense community so we're gonna hit up Compa Kitchen today, maybe some grocery stores later and some markets and it's gonna be really fun. Jackson Heights specifically is so diverse. We got Compa Kitchen right here, one of the hottest Tibetan spots in the all of New York City, maybe the entire country. Tashi, you're gonna walk us through some dishes we've never had. I'm so excited. Let's go. All right, you guys, we are here at Compa Kitchen, Jackson Heights. We're sitting in front of a crazy feast. All this food is regional to the Compa region. Yes, most of them. I know that there's what? There's three major regions of Tibet, right? There's Com, Utsang and Amdo or Compa Kitchen so some of the dishes highlight the Compa region. And you are a Compa person? Yes, I am. Some of these Compa dishes I've never even seen before in my entire life so I'm really excited. What should we lead off with? So we call this puja, it's butter tea. So black tea, a little bit of milk and traditionally it'll have yak butter in it. It's very difficult to get yak products in America, right? Oh, absolutely, yeah. Ooh, that's good. That's super good. And buttery. And I heard, because the climate is so cold in Tibet that it's really good to have this butter, you know, keeps your body moving, metabolizing, you know, and fat burning. I heard there's a lot of different versions of this, right? I think if people have not had butter in their tea. Yo, I'm not even gonna try this. I had this a few times. This is the best version I've ever had. This is also one of like our salvatore dishes. It's called kapce. It's basically fried dough. You can dip this in your butter tea. I usually like to let it soak for a little bit. And it's so cool, because depending on which household you go to, everyone makes their kapce a little different. Put the kapce in the puja. I know you guys aren't afraid of the fat because we're dipping it dough in some butter tea. It's good. The butter tea, it's like, it's a little bit salty, but it's very milky. And it still has that tea flavor. This is the kapapati. This is one of our main dishes in kapapas that we're really known for. Right, because it's regional. It's like, you might not have it in Lhasa, right? Exactly. So it's a salvatore dish. In English, it looks like a meat pie. Inside is beef. Once again, if we're into it, it would be yak meat. They keep it really natural with the spices in the seasoning so it's not too overwhelming. You could say you're sort of an authority to speak on this because you are from Tibet, right? You are from the Com region, right? Kapaputi. Sort of like a clam chowder bowl. These are the Tibetan hot sauces, right? Very famous. Look at that color. This is super deep red. You know, this is packing the spice. This is like such fun food, you know? What do you guys call the hot sauce? Zipé. Zipé. You know, hit me with some zipé. This is the first bite of the puti. The hot sauce is unlike anything I've ever had. I can really taste the herbs. The coriander's really coming through. And that beef is super tender. They also put a little bit of sejuan in here. Because the Com region is pretty close to Sichuan province, right? Wow, I got this. This chili oil looks different, too. I'm excited. Which chili oil do you prefer, bro? My prefer the zipé. Because it has more garlic. So this is gumam, this is blood sausage. Really popular in Tibet in general. This is steamed and this is sauteed, fried. This is the more traditional. This is the more newer kind. I've had a couple other blood sausages in my life, but actually I would say these look super plump and even juicier than the other ones. We put a little bit of sambar in there as well, which is roasted barley, a little bit of meat, coriander and sejuan. Sambar is what we call it, but roasted barley is kind of like our national food. It keeps you full throughout the day. So it's kind of like the nomads food. Gumam, blood sausage. It doesn't have like that overpowering, like bloody taste, but this one's really good. Really easy to eat, very savory, fried gumam. Which I know the steamed ones traditional, but I know why they came up with this one. I think conventionally, maybe more people in 2020 would go with the fried one. Okay, next up we have what? So we've got the momo and we've got the timmo. The timmo's used to kind of as a side dish for main courses, like the pepper sauteed peppers. This one a lot of people see resemblance to baozi. Basically like a campo momo, the wrapper's a little thick and it's a little bit more juicier. This is probably up Tibetan food globally, the number one more exported dish. Dude, I love the filling in momos because it's more beef, right? Hit me with some of that sauce. Oh, this is the hot sauce, right? Honestly, I think momos are my favorite dumplings or my favorite like bao, like baozi-like thing. It's sort of like the way Andrew the jazzo from Vietnam is my favorite egg roll. The momo is my favorite version. I just wanna go somewhere at a high altitude right now. Can we go hiking? Let's go climb a mountain. Okay, moving on now to our stir-fried chili section. Tashi, what do we got here? So here we've got the chili, which is beef tongue, sauteed, and then over here, we've got the Anaheim peppers with beef, sauteed as well. And then we've got the chicken chili, a little South Asia, it's foolish. Growing up in Com, you actually didn't eat this chili chicken. Not as much. That was like more once you got to Jackson Heights. Exactly. This dish should Jackson Heights. This is Jackson Heights. Is popping. So this is where I recommend to dip the ting mo. Oh, okay. So we eat the ting mo as your spoon. I love that salty buttery flavor that's imparting in everything. So you're saying it has more flavor than a monto? I would say so for sure. All right. Chile. Chile sounds like the coolest way you can tell somebody to chill when they're being too savage. Instead of chile, chile. Chile. See these slices of garlic in here? I love that with the peppers. The first stir-fried beef tongue dish I've ever had. Next up, let's go with the beef and the peppers. Yes. You can really taste the Chinese influence in there. Compa food, you know, taking on some Sichuan influences is not a bad idea because Sichuan is like the most popular cuisine right now of the Chinese. So I'm like, no, if you're gonna take the best parts of them and some influences, that's gonna be great. So far, I'm with the chile. The last time I actually had this was in Jackson Heights at a Chinese Bangladeshi spot. This actually reminds me of the shout-out section that I gotta do, because every time I'm in Queens, I gotta shout people out, shout out to people at Jalal, NYC. And obviously the people who helped set this up was Tenzin and T Cho from Boston, two of our other Tibetan friends. Thank you guys. My family lived in Manhattan, Harlem, and there's not, as you know, there's not as many Tibetan people out there. Therefore, there's not as many Tibetan restaurants. So a lot of the Tibetan food and cuisine that I would get was from home. And then when I moved to Queens and then there was this whole world, this restaurant itself, the Compa Kitchen, it's for our community, it's to help feed our community, to bring the world closer to home, but also to teach up the Queens community about Tibetan food, about Compa Food, you know? I think restaurants are beautiful because in a way, not only do you have a story and culture in the dishes, but you can even have some of the same things that a museum will have on the wall. I'm going in for more chili. This is a five out of five. I don't even like shout-out. Like seriously, I'm not like generally, because it's so easy to like mess it up. All right, our last and final round here at Compa Kitchen, what are we looking at, Taji? So we've got the Tibetan noodles here, the flavoring and the broth is super rich. They cook the beef bones for at least three days. Here we've got the laffing, it's mung bean starch, so the noodle in itself doesn't have a lot of flavors, but it's in the sauce. And here we've got shogo sip sip. This is basically sauteed, shoestring, potato. Shogo sip sip, that's a really cool name. That's one of the coolest names for a dish. No, the Tibetan language is really cool. Shogo sip sip, mm. This is just really good with the chopped chilies in it too. Yeah. Laffing. Smooth, spicy. Wow. Chukla, that's a bone broth, I can feel it. Last but not least, guys. So this we call deku, it's got butter in there, so it's a little bit more on the creamier side. Yeah! Butter and the kanji. Imagine if we were into bed with the yak butter, that would be crazy in the yak butter kanji. Everything low-pick out of the salty, buddy-flick. Yeah, low-pick. I've never had like buttery like rice or kanji. Let's go. That kind of works. All the countries in different regions around that area we call the Himalayan region. So we've got Tibet, we've got Nepal, we've got Bhutan, we've got India, there's a lot of countries surrounding it. So we're all influenced by one another and it shows in the food. My favorite has got to be the kampaputi. I haven't had beef in a bread roll that was so fragrant and herbaceous. My favorite is the gyumma, steamed or fried. It's just such a staple in the Tibetan cuisine. No, that was my favorite blood sausage I've ever had. My favorites, the laffing and the chile. And last but not least, I might have to say salted butter tea. Yes. This is crazy. Cheers. Where to next, Tashi? Next, we're gonna hit up some Tibetan markets. Yo, Ena, have you ever been to a Tibetan market? No, man. The Shanae Google. Which means we'll see you in a bit. I know how Tibetans drink all that butter but still keep it moving. I feel great. Let's go. So now we're going to Tibetan market. It's actually conveniently right next to Kumbak Kitchen. Tashi, are all the Himalayan spots and Jackson Heights all walking distance from each other? Yes, absolutely. It just makes things easier. Jackson Heights is closer to Manhattan than you think. It's not even far. I'm not gonna lie to the flushing friends. Flushing's a little deeper but Jackson Heights is actually pretty close. We're not that far from Corona, right? Since we just opened up yesterday we don't have an official signage yet so it's a little bit speak easier. So we are getting the sneak preview of the Tibetan market. Let's go check it out. So we're in front of the market. This is Tibetan cafe. We've got some snacks here. Is that a chapelle? It is a chapelle. Oh my goodness. These are chapelle. Oh, would like one. Yes, absolutely. What's that? So that is, this is amdo palae. So it's a regular bread but the difference is it's a little bit more thicker, a little chewier and also a little sweeter. And then that is the sampa, right? That is the sampa cake. Yes. I have watched three to four YouTube videos in the past 24 hours on it. So to see the sampa in person after watching the videos, it's like. Ah, I'm excited. We sell natural gemstones such as amber, coral, turquoise. Since I was 17 years old, I collect the most antique jewelry. It's very hard to find. You guys wear for like spiritual, religious reasons? Yeah. We chant like such as the om mani be maho da om mani be maho da om mani be maho da om mani be maho da om mani be maho da It's like a part of a meditation. He's got prey on, man. I will. Oh, man. This is a tea pot or hot pot? For hot pot. Oh, shoot. Yo, this is antique, you know? We work from Tibet. Made in China. The Mongolians. Mongol, like warrior tea pot. Yeah, they have Mongolian. Yo, I thought it was a genie lamp or something like that. It is. In a Mongolia Tibet or any Himalayan religions, butter tea, right? You use wood, wood cup. When you drink Coca-Cola out of the glass, it tastes better. When you drink Yak butter tea out of the wood, it tastes better. And this one is for chung. When Tibetans drink something, they drink it. They drink a lot of it. This is our shot glass. The shoes are normally like here. Look at the midsole on these. The very traditional shoes. It's all handmade. If you just put supreme back here, I mean, this is the hottest thing now. What are some really common, maybe two to three Tibetan sentences or phrases that like we can put out there? Trashi Dele. Trashi Dele have so many different meanings. Trashi Dele is welcome. Thank you. Hello. Wish you well. Good luck. You don't have to go so hard on the K, but Trashi Dele. Trashi Dele. What would be one other one that we got to say like? Chedding. Chedding. Chedding. So that means wish you a long life. Trashi Dele. Chedding. I like it. Hell yeah, yeah. That's tight. We've got a traditional Tibetan breakfast right here. This is as authentic as it gets. We've got sambal in here. We've got butter tea, a little bit of Yak butter as well. And also Yak cheese in there. So this is also sambal right here, but a different style. We pray before eat in breakfast. So, you would drink the liquid first and then when you have the stuff left over, then you start kneading it together, squeezing it. Exactly. This particular style is called a kadeh. It's like eating with your mouth or with your tongue. I like how you drink the soup, and then you kinda lick the last bit of the soup, and then you pull it together. You just lick this, and every morning, this is a very, like, heavy breakfast. No, you can use this, and then you put tea in here, so just like this, and then you take bite. Would you try? Yeah, I'll try it. It's buttery, slightly salty, very nutty and sticky. So right here, we've got the chappale. So this is chappale. Yo, I remember last time I had this a little, oh! Juicy. My bad. Yo, that's what I've been looking for. Hand me one of those halves immediately. Chappale. When you bite it, you gotta, like, suck up the juice. That's good. The chappale is a five out of five. It feels like an empanado. It's like a similar form, but man. I need to wash it down with some puja. I noticed that this yak butter tea had a little bit more spices in it than the one at the restaurant. Last but not least. This is sumpa cake, something that our New York community in Queens kind of came up with. On the bottom, you've got the sumpa. And on the top, it's our version of a vanilla ice cream. So it's a vanilla ice cream mixed in with different kinds of herbs and spices. Together, they complement each other really well and some raisins. Oh, whoa. The raisins. Sumpa cake. You know what I like about it? It tastes like something from a thousand years ago mixed with something from 10 years ago. That's very much, I mean, that's really what this dessert is. That ice cream is really good. I'm just gonna make a bad health decision but the right foodie decision. So this is a kata. It's a silk scarf. Basically, we use it for ceremonial situations. You put it around their neck and it's almost like a tashi dele. If someone do something for you special or, you know, you really need to say thank you so much. So we're offering for kata. I want to offer it for you first. Wow. My favorite. Thank you. Thank for coming. Tashi dele. Yeah, for you. Okay. All right, Dan, Dan's getting the... Okay. Thank you for your coming. All right, so we just left Tibetan market and now that was very traditional and now we're heading to pretty much like how most people in 2020 might first experience Tibetan food, which is these Momo trucks. It's fun to say. It's delicious. You can fill it with a bunch of different things, right? Obviously, Momo is a really common dish in Tibet but also the Momo truck is just easy. It's easy to make it to go. It's accessible and a lot of people know it and a lot of people know dumplings. I've never really got to participate in any ceremonies like that before so this got this kata on us. This is dope. But I got to say right behind us, Andrew, this is real Queens right here. You just walk all up on the sidewalk. Then I'll let you do this in the city. Let's go. That's why I like it. So... Oh, no, this is not the truck. This is on the Momo. Yo, we just walking by Momo trucks to the point where I'm like... There's so many. You're going to walk past like several. In this general area, I can count at least four. Some of these trucks are 24 hours. So a lot of people, when they go out and they're hungry, they'll just stop by and get momos at like 5 a.m. That is something I did not expect that you would get drunkies in Momo. No, it really feels international right here and I feel like I'm in... It could be New Delhi. It could be Lhasa. I don't know. Mom's Momo truck is right outside of Tenzin Salon. That is a Tibetan salon. We just landed here at Momo truck. Tell us about Mom's Momo. So we basically opened four years ago. The reason we call it Mom's Momo is actually the recipes come from my mom. He's our big brother. Your guys' Momo's at Mom's Momo taste way different than even the other Momo trucks. Most is different, yeah. We really want to give the glimpse of what Momo's back in Tibet taste like here. What region of Tibet are you from? Ando. How are the Momo's different in each region? I wouldn't say it's big different, but the ingredients here, the stuff they put inside, the thinner the skin there, the best it is. If you look at the skin, you can see the meat inside. That's good, man. That means that Momo's, you know, is killer. Okay, okay. I'm so excited. I want to do it the Tibetan way, man. What he said in Amdo, you're going to love these momos. How's your delay? Um... Today, today, today. So this is beef, three of each, one, three steamed and three fried. And this is a potato, again, three, three. And this is veggie, and this is chicken. Wow, steamed beef. So much soup in that, wow. It really tastes like soup, fried beef. I'm dipping it in the sauce. The fried beef with the sauce. All right, I'm going for the laffing now. This is really good, too. Really refreshing. Sort of like a contrast to the momos, which is more hearty, oily, but in the best of ways. This is the chicken one. I got to go steam first. I think if I go with fried, then the steamed is more... It doesn't compare. What's the most momos you can eat, man? These things are packing the meat. Personally, me, when I'm hungry, like, a lot. Steamed chicken momos. This is the best chicken dumpling I've ever had. The best chicken dumpling I've ever had. Because, you know, I've had chicken dumplings before, but none of them have been as juicy as this. Hey, kudos to you. I'm going to eat a whole fried one. See, I'm even getting full. That's how good this is. Honestly, these momos are booming right now. Oh, my goodness. Tastes like a really deep chicken stew inside of a momo. Hey, I can see why momos are blowing up, and especially mom's momo is selling out like hotcakes. Last but not least, what are you guys going for? I'm running out of space, so I can't eat everything. Fried, yeah. I'm going to go with steamed potato. I'm going to go with steamed veggie. Momos are really fun to eat. Now, you can pick it up. It stays together. You can eat it with your hand. You can dip it. There's juice in it. There's so much going on. Personally, I really hope that, you know, you see, like everybody knows a lot, right? Momos, I want to really become like international food. If you guys want to check out the one here, the Jackson Heights, brought away by the Wendy's. Okay, last but not least, on our Himalaya Heights crawl through Jackson Heights. Today, we're here at Shangri-La of Nepal. It's almost like a Himalayan shop with a bunch of different little knicks and knacks, clothes, snacks, spices. So you'll see a variety of a bunch of things. Let's go ahead downstairs. So this is kind of like your fruit leather sort of type thing. Exactly. Okay. You guys like Dumba. You've got a bag of Dumba available right here. Oh, that's what she was mixing it in with. Yeah. The tea mix for the puja. Yakchi. Yo, cop that. All right. So this is chura. It's like a really popular Himalayan snack or like candy. It's just dried cheese, but it's really hard. All right, let's get it. These are the Air Zoom Everests. Of course we had to end off on some Tibetan snacks, Himalayan snacks from the shop. They had a mystical dog in there too. Kind of like a nine tails Pokemon. I don't know if you guys know about that. This is Amdopale. We just picked up from this truck right over here, Himalayan fresh food. So it's like a flatbread. Let's bust it open. I heard it sweet. That's what she said. So do you eat it with anything or you just eat it straight up? You can eat it with like butter, tea, whatever you want. Yo, and these are the dishes that I was, when I was doing the research yesterday on Wikipedia, these are the dishes that I've seen. In my hand, I have dried yak cheese, dried yak cheese. It's a little hard. So it stays in your mouth for a while. Yo, it's almost like emanating that same vibe from the butter tea, but just slow release. Yeah. Careful, this one's not combined too hard. Amdopale. Slightly sweet. Imagine this with like butter tea though. Kind of dry, but like buttery at the same time. It's kind of hard to explain. You guys notice there's more buttery in the middle? The butter sweet flavor kind of creeps up on you. Shout out to Himalayan Delight, nature's best. So this is another version of the Chura except it's called Chupi. This looks like some old, like some dried smoked Gouda. Whoa, whoa. Way more herbaceous than you thought. This does not taste like Western cheese. Almost like hardened butter and milk. Yeah, I'm not saying this in any type of way. It kind of tastes like a block of wood. The longer you keep it in your mouth, like the flavor changes. I'm gonna leave it in my mouth. I'm gonna leave it in the back right there. It's a journey. I knew like it better than the first one we had. So this is a mixed one. Sometimes we call these, this one is called Titora. This is called Pong and they mix it with different types of spices with sugar. You can use this as kind of spread or you just squeeze it out like a... Oh no, you just go for it, yeah, you eat it. I gotta say the Amdo Pade, the sweet bread, that was like the most unassuming looking thing with the nicest, sweetest, buttery flavor. I would like to eat that with some other things. Do you know those Mexican candies, like the dry plums or the Chumango, yeah? Himalayan Chumango style. Is that a chili in there? Yeah. That's a chili in the fruit. Let's do it. Whoa. Ooh, not bad. That's like a more raw version of like a fruit roll up. I love fruit. I want to say like dried orange peel or fruit peel. It has that saltiness. It does taste like something I had before. It kind of has that sour sweetness and spiciness almost like those tamarind candies that maybe some of you guys used to eat growing up. Yo, I like them. Yeah? I like them. If you put it on something, mix it up with a little bit more sugar. Yo, I like that pumpkin you like. So wrap it up there. Yo, big shout out to Tashi. Thank you so much for being so knowledgeable and making it fun and taking us on this little Tibetan tour. We encourage everybody else out there to check out all the Himalayan and Tibetan spots out here. Man, it's an amazing community and it's really, really good food. For sure, the chapale is the OG for me. My OG thing I love from little Tibet. But then my new thing, it was the chili. I'm going to get that Kampaputi, which is kind of that fragrant, herbaceous beef that's in that bread bowl. I think just doing this journey with you, I think usually when I go eat, I'll just go to one spot but just going from one place to another. It just made me appreciate my community, my culture more. Another one of my big takeaways was that there's so many different regions. There's three major regions. They all have their own style of foods. You got Usang, you got Amdo and of course, Kham. That was really dope to learn that. I actually didn't know about the three different regions of Tibet. So, man, you know, if they've been making momos for, I don't know how many centuries, let me tell you that they're pretty damn good at this point. And definitely the chicken ones over our mom's momo was crazy. Oh, the chicken one was actually one of the best ones things I had today, man. Oh, we got mom's momo was fired. Mom's momo was fired. Tashi Dalai Tuchiman. Thanks so much. Thank you for watching that video and in the comments down below, let us know if there is another neighborhood around New York that we got to check out because we will be filming in Queensmore. Guys, that was the Jackson Heights Tibetan episode of the world and why. Thank you so much for tuning in. Shout out to Tashi. Shout out to Jackson Heights. Shout out to Queens. We out. Peace. You know, all right, you guys are my man. All right, we got some of them. What's the matter? It's a lot. I was like, where's the soup? Oh, that's butter too. I don't think it's the butter. I don't think it's the butter. Let me wash it down with a momo. I had to wash it down with a momo. I'm good, guys.