There is creativity in everything that Tanisha Phanbuh does, be it making showpieces from scraps or adding a twist to traditional platter.
The 24-year-old chef runs a pop-up at Delhi’s Ek Bar, a venture of the Olive Family. Phanbuh joined Ek Bar, a cocktail bar, in 2015 when she was on vacation.
“Before Ek Bar happened, I got into NIFT Delhi but the city was hard to adjust to and I fell ill. So I came back and pursued English honours for a degree and at the same time baked and sold cakes. I visited Delhi on a vacation in 2015 and casually met the manager at Ek Bar. The quirkiness of the place attracted me instantly and I took the job,” says the former student of Loreto Convent and Pine Mount.
Phanbuh became the queen of tribal gourmet earlier this year when she participated in Femme Foodies, Asia’s first female food truck show. “Having reached the finale week, I experienced all the rounds of challenges – very trying at times but packed with adrenalin. It was quite a task cooking out of food trucks and presenting gourmet-level food,” she recollects. The show was shot in different locations in Goa.
The innovative chef, whose cooking lessons started early at home with her mother who loved hosting parties and making everything from scratch, chose to present northeastern food at the show as much as possible and experimented with the conventional recipes. For instance, Phanbuh cooked doh nei iong but with steamed aromatic fish, sticky rice and radish salad (the traditional platter has pork cooked on the stove with gravy and normal rice). She also tried Mylliem chicken roulade stuffed with roasted white sesame and poha crisp and made granola bar of the age-old aloo-muri. “This (chicken roulade) won me the tag of Tribal Gourmet from the judges,” she says in an email interview from Delhi. She missed the finale by a sliver and ended up fourth in the competition.
Phanbuh’s menu at the pop-up is equally enticing. Be it the bold Tungrymbai on toast, classic chicken wings with a hint of Bhut Jolokia or Khajing Bora, or Manipuri style shrimp pakoras with chilli garlic chutney, every recipe has Phanbuh’s signature twist.
Most of the ingredients used in the food are sourced from Phanbuh’s garden in Shillong and other northeastern states. “It is a bit of a challenge because we have to take utmost care in the packing as it reaches Delhi only on the third day. It is expensive but it is a North East pop-up and I wanted to make it special so I am happy to have made the effort.”
“The chayote squash is from my garden, my mum sends me the produce – tree tomatoes, variety of chillies including the daring Bhut Jolokia, smoked pork, fresh bamboo shoot, tungrymbai, perilla (neilieh), black sesame (because locally available ones taste like carbon) to even Burmese coriander come from there. The menu at the pop-up is predominantly Khasi and Manipuri.But I would definitely want to examine and experiment more deeply with all the recipes of the seven sisters,” says the tribal gourmet chef.
Nitin Tiwari, Phanbuh’s better half and truly so, also experiments with northeastern ingredients. The master mixologist and cocktail expert from Uttarakhand, whom Phanbuh met is equally innovative and serves cocktails like Bhut Jolokia Mary, a pure fire, Beeda tonic, which is inspired by the tradition of eating betel nut, and Smoked Pork Old Fashioned, which is infused with deep flavour of smoked pork and hint of coffee.
Talking about their journey together since 2015, Phanbuh says, “Nitin set up the bar and was behind the entire concept and functioning which was what drew my attention. I, on the other hand wanted to interact with guests and held the guest relations. Later, the management saw my social media campaigns I used to run personally for the bartenders (for various competitions) and decided to include me partly into the marketing team. Early this January, Nitin encouraged me to try auditioning for the food truck show and I was selected.”
Phanbuh quit the job and got married with plans to relocate. After a few months, AD Singh, the owner of the Olive Family, offered her the opportunity to host the pop-up with Phanbuh gladly accepted. Now the duo creates waves with their originality with the crazy cocktails complementing Tanisha’s regional recipes.
In an earlier statement to the media, Singh had said, “We are excited about having this northeastern pop-up. Tanisha and Nitin’s love story blossomed at Ek Bar and so it was perfect to do a pop-up with them, which is all about New Indian food where classic flavours are presented in a modern way.”
The couple does not rule out bringing the unique dining experience to the North East. “It has always been my dream to set up a small bespoke restaurant in my backyard,” says the young chef, who is lovingly called ‘kabariwala’ by close friends and colleagues for her habit of picking up old bottles of all sizes and transforming them into unique works of art, something that Tanisha is expert in.
~ NM
