From Calcutta to Capital City

Some of the best things to eat in Baton Rouge are hiding in plain sight, buried in Indian restaurant menus long enough to qualify as novellas.

Why it matters: Baton Rouge gets underestimated as a food city. One of its quieter pleasures is Indian Chinese food, a hybrid cuisine that brings together soy sauce, vinegar, chilies and the sort of deep-fried excess that makes self-control feel overrated.

What’s happening: Tucked into local Indian menus are dishes like Manchurian and Schezwan, plus noodles with soy and vinegar. They are not random side quests. They come from a distinct culinary tradition shaped by migration, adaptation and people figuring out how to make dinner more interesting.

The backstory: Indian Chinese cuisine began in Kolkata, still called Calcutta by many. Starting in the late 1700s, Hakka Chinese traders and laborers settled there when the city was the capital of British India, according to Conde Nast Traveler. They cooked their own food, then adapted it to Indian ingredients and local tastes.

How it tastes: This is not Chinese food as most Baton Rouge residents know it. It is Chinese food filtered through India’s love of spice, sauce and turning up the volume to Bollywood. 

• Schezwan sauce, the Indian transliteration of Sichuan, uses dried red chilies instead of Sichuan peppercorns. So you get heat and punch, but not the numbing buzz of the Chinese original.
• Manchurian dishes typically feature vegetables or meat battered, fried and tossed in a dark sauce based on soy, garlic, ginger and green chilies. The deep fryer, in other words, gets treated with proper respect. Many of these dishes originated in Bombay. 

Where to find it: Baton Rouge now has roughly half a dozen Indian restaurants, with several opening in the past two years. At Gunpowder Indian Cuisine on Highland Road near LSU, for instance, you will find several noodle dishes, plus Gobi Manchurian and Mushroom Manchurian. The chili chicken and masala egg noodles are worth seeking out.

The bottom line: Baton Rouge does not need to travel far for one of the world’s more inventive mashups. It is already here, hiding between the curries and biryanis.

— Mukul Verma