 because I think this is the most elegant look this guy's ever had in my life. This is a tandoori chicken tiki masala banh mi. So before you guys go, you gotta take a Baidu shot. On this episode of Fungro's Food, we're exploring the fusion of South Asian daisy foods and the Chinese cuisine. Bengali Chinese, Indo Chinese, Hakka Chinese, Gobi Manchurian. There's actually a lot of different names for it, but this is a fusion of East and West of the Himalayas. So first up, we start in Brooklyn with our friend Naq. What's going on everybody? Welcome to another Bengali Chinese episode of Fungro's Food. Of course, joining us today, we've got our Bengali correspondent, Naq. What's going on guys? Naq, we're out in Bushwick, in front of a spot called Monkey King. What are we doing here? I was lucky enough to put you guys on to the Indo Chinese food. They call it Hakka food, it's not really Hakka food. It's, you know, if you guys aren't hip, it's Chinese people went to India. Food fusion, you know what I'm saying? Indian people love it. That was Indo Chinese food, 1.0. 1.0. And it's something that a lot of people grew up eating and this is kind of like not even 2.0. I think it's 3.0, you know? You know, my friends, Harvey and Munzie, Harvey's Chinese, Munzie's Bengali came together, they put their cultures together, they put their backgrounds together. Now we got this new take, you know, not even Indo Chinese food, I'm going to claim it. Bengali Chinese food. And we do our Bengali Chinese food. This is a very special restaurant, guys. We're going to go talk to Harvey and Munzie and we're going to go eat a bunch of food and try this spot out, guys. I'm very excited. Let's check out Monkey King in Bushwick. All right, we're here with the owners, Harvey and Munzie. Why did you call it the Monkey King? So we picked the Monkey King because our theme is to evoke a sense of nostalgia and the story of the Monkey King as something that's popular in all parts of Asia. In Chinese culture, he's Tsung Wung Kong. In Indian culture, he's actually Hanuman, the god, and then in American world, he's Goku from Dragon Ball Z. The Monkey King is a rebel who goes on this journey and we consider ourselves rebels going against the green, you know, disappointing our Asian families and kind of quitting our corporate jobs to follow our dreams. All right, you guys, opening up here at the Monkey King, you heard it, Bengali Chinese, Chinese Bengali fusion. Knock, we're looking at some fushka. This is traditional Bengali dish, but I've never seen it like this. I've never seen it like this. I think this is the most elegant looking fushka I've ever had in my life. So, oh my gosh. And it's got like seasonal beans. Fushka is made up of a lot of beans, but, you know, they can swap them out. Chickpeas, chickpeas and potatoes, usually. We got this. Yo, this is dope. I feel like right off the rip, this already shows what's different about it. They got a flower in the fushka. Because I think a lot of the other food on the table generally looks a little bit more Chinese, but this one right off the bat, this is- This is the most traditional Bengali dish. Yo, what are we saying in Bengali? Is it kaitha jai? Kaitha jai, yeah. Kaitha jai, I remember, man. Straight to the mata. Straight to the mata, alright, let's go. Mmm, good. Refreshing, nice off the bat. Get yourself some elevated seasonal fushkas. Alright you guys, moving on to the proteins. Of course, I'm gonna go with the Hong Kong shrimp toast with the coconut dipping sauce. This looks really, really good. I noticed the shrimp toast made a comeback in the sort of the elevated Asian food. Is it a big Hong Kong thing? Man, I wouldn't even say it's like that big in Hong Kong. I would put it- I feel like I've had it at VF places like that VF shrimp toast. This is actually not a dish that I grew up eating, but I've seen it at more and more restaurants in the past five years. So it's trendy and it's delicious. This is the shrimp toast here at the Monkey King. Oh wow. Dude, I love this, man. There's like a good amount of coconut. It's very crispy. I mean, you can even hear it in the microphone. A lot of people are doing Mike's Hot Honey on just like a pepperoni slice with some jalapenos. This is straight on some halal, you know, cumin lamb ribs. That's like the most New York thing ever, you know what I'm saying? You're adding Mike's Hot Honey to something. Let's do it. The cumin lamb rib. Yeah, I didn't even- We are no strangers to this knock. I didn't expect to see this on the menu. The thing is we use lamb ribs for biryani, you know what I'm saying. Go for it, cumin lamb ribs. Halal. All right, next round we've got the duck fat fried rice. You've got pot stickers. You've got the crispy garlic chicken. But all done, you know, their own Monkey King style. Crispy garlic fried chicken at the Monkey King. Crispy sweet garlic. It tastes a lot like the traditional Cantonese crispy garlic fried chicken, but it's even a little bit sweeter and got a little bit more heat to it. Yeah, I wasn't expecting that heat, honestly. All right, here we got chicken pot stickers, but with a cinnamon infused soy sauce. That's kind of the Bengali twist to it. Bengali cuisine cinnamon and chicken go hand in hand. There's a lot of cinnamon, our curries, chicken curries, stuff like that. You guys have dumplings like this? Not really. It's been something that's been introduced recently with the momos and stuff like that as Himalayan culture's been popular. I'm not gonna lie, I didn't know how I was gonna feel about the cinnamon infused soy sauce. It adds that little extra layer to it. It gives it a little pop. And for someone who grew up eating a lot of soy sauce, I'm like, ooh. It's like waking up from a dream, like I feel like I had that, but you know what I mean? It's like this vague, like familiarity that I think I get from the cinnamon and the chicken coming together from a dream. The cinnamon is tapping into your synapses. Yeah, it's making those. All right, duck fat fried rice. This is the special right here. Bengalis might be one of the few South Asian countries that eat duck like pretty regularly, hash curry and stuff like that. I guess the Bengali world probably has a few more, like I guess East Asian or Southeast Asian influences because of the proximity more than like somebody from, for example, like Pakistan would have, right? So just when you think that a brown person doesn't eat that, maybe the Bengalis do. There's a lot of brown people, man. We've been eating a lot of different things. Yeah, that's true. That's true. It's not just North Indians representing brown people, guys. Don't, hey. I don't know if I can, I don't know if I can say that. I can say if you can't say it. All right, you guys, we're trying a very special Monkey King version of Tassio red roasted pork right here. And interestingly, they've got this ghergchong, which is like a ginger scallion, a lot of times used for chicken. This is one of my favorite garnishes of all time, the ghergchong, ghergchong. Let's do it. Did you guys sous-vise this meat or something? Like what's, it is so tender. Wanna miss it out? I'm gonna go. And it's delicious and it almost tastes like an in-between of almost like a pork chop and Tassio put together. And it's just like incredible. Yeah, this is good. All right. Next course, we got some crab sumai and some Bengali battered mushrooms. Yeah, so these are more spice-wise Sichuan, like fried mushrooms, Andrew, but I believe what is it, Friday chickpea batter? Chickpea batter, which is something that's pretty common in South Asia, specifically Bengali cuisine, a lot of like our little fritters. And then like fried food, we use like a chickpea flour batter. So this is gonna be like your non-seafood style of the salt and pepper squid right here. Yo, this is dope. I have never seen a crab cake sumai. This is the first time in my life I'm ever having this. They are doing some things differently here. Crab cake sumai. You guys don't play around. That is fully crab. I love how everything is like familiar enough, but it always has its own twist that I've never had before. That is the mark of something special. Last but not least, ending off, Monkey King, we have a classic Cantonese dish. This is the beef chow fun, AKA the gong chow nong hall, and it has ribeye beef inside. Let's get it started. This is actually, I think, my favorite Chinese dish. Of all time, yeah. Of all time. Of all time. And I'm the one that's always putting my parents on some things that we try. And I feel like, first of all, shout out to Pat C.U. I think Pat C.U.'s root dish is actually gong chow nong hall, but I feel like Pat C.U. over the past 10 years, was beating it. But people reinventing this beef chow fun is gonna make it come back. Well, I think a lot of people, they don't- Surge back in the game. A lot of people don't put effort into beef chow fun. Let's be honest. They let it be a little side dish. Noodles is real, not even dark. You just put it on the menu, but I can tell that this is cooked all the way through, man. And then you guys have your special house-made, kind of like Sichuan chili oil. I'm so excited about this, because you guys do sauces so well here. Everything from the cinnamon-infused soy sauce down to this, down to the peanut sauce. It's incredible. Yeeeeeeeah! Rib-eye beef chow fun! Wow. I love like the wok hei, right? That stir-fry, like that smoky flavor you get from stir-frying things, right? Like that always is- That thing, that's the reason it's my favorite. There's like, when you get that flavor right, it just tastes so good, man. It tastes like, without smoke, without charcoal, you still get that great smoke flavor. So before you guys go, you gotta take a baijo shot. It's not right to come to the Monkey King without a baijo shot. We like to say it's our Asian version of tequila shots at the Monkey, which is cheers in Chinese. Take the shot and then flip it upside down to show that it's neat. That means I don't wanna see a droplet come up. If I see a droplet come up, then you might have to take another one and these bad boys are one-third of a shot and you're 65%. You're a strong shot. Y'all, I know. Oh, I'm familiar with baijo, man. Hey, you guys, I don't do it often. To the Monkey King. Bad guy, bad guy. All right, you guys. We're still in Bushwick right now. You know, we just came from Indo-Chinese, 3.0 the future. Obviously that was their own story journey to the East, but where are we at now? Right in front of Indica House. We gotta do a classic Indo-Chinese food, you know what I'm saying. Once you try the futuristic stuff, it's good to have the appreciation for where it came from, the classics. Yo, I'm looking forward to some chicken lollipops. I'm looking forward to some haka noodles. Let's do it, man. Underrated cuisine, man. Let's go try it out. All right, you guys. We're looking at Indo-Chinese food. You know, the originator. This is the one that you'll find at numerous Bengali-owned Indian restaurants, right? And at Indian-owned Indian restaurants. So this is Indian food, but it's Chinese food, but it's French. But it's Indian, but it's Chinese. It started by Chinese people who moved to India. And it was started by haka people. That's why they call this haka food, right? It's haka in Cantonese people that moved from Southern China to Calcutta specifically. And, you know, they brought their cuisines with them. Yo, let's try the chicken lollipops. This is one of the most popular dishes. You gotta get the sauce, man. What's really interesting is that I don't know if, like I don't eat this at Chinese restaurants. I think the idea of frying chicken came from Chinese people. Oh, okay, okay, okay. It was an idea to fry chicken. All right, guys. Chicken lollipop. So they kind of like loosen up the chicken at the bottom of the drumstick, then push it up. Shut it up. It's good. It's good. I always put Indo-Chinese food on the same tier as like American Chinese food, you know? It just hits like that greasy fried like flavor powder. Not too many layers of flavor, but you don't need it, right? And I think it plays that role in South Asia, you know what I mean? It's like the go-to. Like, you know how like you could be in Wisconsin, right? And it'll be like a Friday night and a nice white family of four. It's like, oh, what are we doing tonight? We're gonna hit the local Chinese buffet, you know? Same thing, you go somewhere in Mumbai. Nice family of four. What are we doing tonight? Oh, we're gonna hit the Haka spot and get a bunch of chicken lollipop. That is crazy that Haka immigrants created the same cultural positioning of the food in India, Calcutta, that it has in Wisconsin, Green Bay. I think that it's crazy. Dude, I think that is Chinese people's like one of the greatest accomplishments man. No matter where Chinese people have gone in the world, they've created that position for themselves in cuisine. You know, whether it's the Caribbean, I've had Jamaican Chinese food in Germany. The jerk chicken lo mein and stuff like that. Anyways, guys, here we have Haka shrimp noodles, guys. This is kind of like a shrimp chow mein, but it looks different. Obviously it's like orangey red. This is a different color. It also kind of looks like a cross between like Yakisoba too. Yo, it's good. This has become so popular that if you go to like an Indian grocery store now, they make instant noodles of this, you know what I mean? Indian brands make instant noodles of these Haka style noodles that, you know, because it's what kids want to eat after school. It's what like, you know, moms that don't want to cook what they can make. It's like that, it just plays the same role that I think Chinese food plays in America for a lot of people. So what exactly is Haka and what exactly is Indian about this recipe in your opinion? Like the spices, obviously I do, I do feel a little bit more spice obviously than the Chinese version. That might be a little bit lighter in flavor, more soy sauce. It doesn't taste fully Chinese, it doesn't taste fully Indian. It really is that mix of the things like Indian people don't have stir frying is not a technique in Indian cuisine, you know what I'm saying? Noodles exist in other formats, but not really in this style, right? So that is like what's really Chinese about it, the cooking techniques and the ingredients. But I think that the sauces, the spices, the turmeric, the chili pepper, the extra use of tomatoes, I think it all comes. Yo, I'm not gonna lie guys, these Haka noodles, this is like one of the best ones I ever had. Last but not least, what do we got here? The black pepper chicken, which is a real dish in Chinese America. Yeah, but this, I don't think this looks like it. Look at these chilies, bro, look at these chilies, man. This is definitely for South Asians right here. Black pepper chicken, Haka style. Whoa, it's not thick. It's kind of like if you ever had a black pepper chicken dish at like one of the Chinese express spots, except on top of it, it's got mad chilies. Yeah. Woo! It's like that really traditional, like Chinese American, like that fried batter chicken, whatever sauce, orange chicken, lemon chicken, like that, that black pepper chicken, but it's just OD spice. Straight up, straight up, this is China Express in Calcutta. I think it was so cool that our first spot, Monkey King, is actually second generation Chinese and Bengali, and you know, South Asian and East Asian coming together and meeting at this point where the two things are already developed in America, and then they're making something new with a cool vibe, it's very high-end, it's very modern and hip, and then you come down here, and this is like that old school fusion, the fusion that's probably been happening for more than a hundred years, right? Where it's like the Chinese went to Calcutta and created these type of Haka dishes, right? Because these are not dishes that you can actually find in China. Not exactly like this, right? Similar, but not the same. So I think that's so cool to just see two sides. You got the Monkey King and then you got Indica. And I think people don't really know how big of a role this cuisine plays in South Asia, because the word Haka is like well-known, it's quintessential, like you wouldn't expect people in India to know what Haka is, even if their idea of it might not be completely correct. Right, right. I mean to be honest, some Chinese people don't even know what a Haka is. So correct me if I'm wrong, if you're in at least that part of India or Bangladesh, and you see like a Chinese-looking person, are people gonna guess that they're probably Haka? Actually no, because in Northeast India, there's a lot of people that look more Southeast Asian and East Asian, and even in Bangladesh, there's people that are like ethically perfect. Okay, so they're not everybody, not every Chinese-looking person is Haka. Or it's not a... The community is like very tiny. You know what I mean? It's like only a few fans love it. Justin, the food was... The food impact was major. Yeah, because I know at every new fast, casual, like Indian spot that's opening up, especially if it's changed from India, there's a spot called Honest over in the West Village. Maybe we could go there, but they're also serving Indo-Chinese food too. Because it's just part of the cuisine now, you know, it's created a lasting impression on the community. Let us know what you think of Bengali, Chinese, Chinese, Bengali, you know, Indo-Chinese, 1.02.0, 3.0 fusions. In the comment section below. Huge shout out to Nak for joining us. Check out his stuff. You can see it around NYC, Go, you know, video surveillance posts all around the city. And until next time, we out. Peace. All right, you guys. Next up on our street food crawl, we are at Honest, and this is a South Indian restaurant that's completely vegetarian. Andrew, you are looking at a $15 Bahubali sandwich that is really classical street food in. You can't find this anywhere except on TikTok right now, but it's come to America. This is a dahi puri, or a dahi puri. So the thing is, it's got potato in the middle. So a lot of people are used to bonnie puri with the rose water. This is, it's got potatoes in it. Oh my God, it's like an Indian taco ball. This is the Bahubali that's got the cheese on top. I've got a little bit of Indian ketchup on here. You can tell right here that's straight from Mumbai. Let's go. This is a very sweet veggie umami sandwich that's got jam in it. They've got all types of veggies in it. And of course, you've got some curry chips on the side. Listen guys, this is like a veggie club sandwich. This is like a taco potato ball. Such a large portion of the population in India is vegetarian. So you already know they're gonna be packing the flavor in a way that a lot of vegetarian spots, they just don't have the reps in the experience to know how to do it. You guys, like I said, I only saw this food on TikTok before. Just go see it in person and eat it in person. First off, we got our food here at Wok and the clouds, like we said, the owner is from Punjab but this is his version of Indo-Chinese food. This is a tandoori chicken tiki masala banh mi. There are definitely some banh mi elements with the mayo, the cucumber, a little bit of the cilantro. However, I would say overwhelmingly, it does taste like an Indo-Chinese dish inside of a banh mi. All right, here we go. This is the Indian version of a Momo. I definitely can see how this appeals to the Indian market. Like we said, this is a tandoori Momo, which is sort of based off of baozi originally and they got this dipping sauce in there. This is pretty good. I can totally see people, you know, outside of the Indian sphere enjoying this. Round two, we got the Ching Mai noodles. This does, this is based off of the Maggie noodles, which is very popular around Southeast Asia and even Europe because I believe the actual Maggie company is from Switzerland or something like that. But anyways, guys, it kind of looks like some version of a chow mein, something you can find at a Hong Kong cafe. So let's check it out, but it smells good. It's bursting with flavor. Oh, that's good. Very peppery, cooked to perfection. Got a little bit of that wok hay. As far as this appealing to the Indian taste buds, I guess I would say that there is definitely a more spiciness, a little bit peppery kick and also a lot of onions. But overall, there's definitely a little bit of curry powder in there. I like it. It's kind of like an instant noodle version of the Singaporean mee fun that you would get at like a Hong Kong cafe. So I think there is definitely some similarities, but overall, man, it's pretty good. Next up, we got garlic shrimp. Now this does look like, parents-wise, a lot of dishes I've seen before, but I gotta give it to them, man. The prawns are huge. There is in the Indo-Chinese cuisine tons of other kind of saucy dishes that you'd make over the walk. Like there's gobi manchurian. They also have their own like Sichuan, seshuan style chicken that they serve. This kind of looks like, if I had to guess, a little bit more like a Thai restaurant dish, like a basil shrimp, but let's check it out, man. Hey, you know what? Thailand though, also part of the Indian sphere, as in a lot of the cuisine has been influenced by India. So I'm not surprised that some of this might look like some Chinese Thai dishes. Guys, this dish is pretty good, man. I can totally co-sign the garlic shrimp here. They're fat, huge prawns, super juicy, cooked to perfection. It does influence by the Hakka people, which maybe is not too far off than like, you know, from the Chio Chow people or the Cantonese people that went to Thailand as well. So I guess what I'm saying is between a lot of Southeast Asian Chinese dishes and Southeast Asian influences, which may have came also partially from India, as in curry powder, then you know, I can kind of see this whole connection between all of this. I could see some of the history in some of this. So I'm pretty excited. I think it was so cool to check out Walk in the Clouds and honestly, man, I'm looking forward to trying more dishes. Sum it all up on this daisy South Asian Chinese food crawl, guys. I just gotta say, man, there's a lot of flavors out there and a lot of actually pre-existing dishes that you have not had. And that's what I love about New York City because so many different people are fusing it with Chinese food. But interestingly enough, this Indo-Chinese mix, it's not from New York City. This is from India. So shout out to all the South Asian countries. You guys are putting your own flair on Chinese food and just other Asian food in general. I would love to see more. You guys, let me know in the comments down below what you guys would like to see and if you've ever tried this dish. But as these are fusions, I'm going to do a fusion dish. I'm going to pour the garlic shrimp sauce, which is delicious, on to the Qing Mai noodles. And this might just be one of the best things here. Indo-Chinese food, man. I think it's a hit.