BY COLE SINANIAN | cole@queensledger.com
JACKSON HEIGHTS — It’s not a dumpling, it’s a momo.
To those familiar with Himalayan and South Asian cuisine, the difference is simple: “Dumpling,” an English word used to describe any dough-based food wrapped around a filling of meat and/or vegetable, has become an amorphous term, vaguely associated with Asian cuisines.
A momo, however — as patrons of Sunday’s 14th annual Jackson Heights Momo Crawl will know — hails from Tibet and can be prepared a number of ways, although the filling must be heavily spiced with ginger and other aromatics, and it traditionally does not contain pork. Yak meat is traditional, though in a pinch, beef will do.
“It wouldn’t be uncommon for a Nepali or Indian restaurant to include some masala in their momo filling,” said Rinzin Thonden, one of the event’s organizers. ”But that’s kind of the beauty of the crawl, since the momo spread across the Indian subcontinent. We encourage people to come out to the crawl and sort of try between these different sample momo from a variety of different restaurants so they can see how it’s done differently.”
Festivities Sunday got off to a rainy start at noon in Diversity Plaza. With 32 participating vendors offering Tibetan, Bhutanese, Nepali, Indian, and Sikkimese-Indian style momos, momo-crawlers bought $15 “passports” that gave them access to unlimited $1 momos at each location. Defending Momo Crawl champion Om Wok ultimately won over voters, with its giant, juicy, Tibetan-style momos, earning the top spot for the second year in a row. Runners up were Nepali Momo Cafe, Nepali Bhanchha Ghar, Himalayan Yak, and Darjeeling Kitchen Cafe. Flavors and styles ran the gamut, from steamed, fried and vegetarian, to the Nepali-style, tomato gravy-drenched “jhol” momo, vegetarian, chive-stuffed “chu-tse” momos, and the pan-fried, crispy-on-top, soft-on-the-bottom “kothey” momo.
What first began as a low-key foodie outing organized by Jackson Heights local Jeffrey Orlick back in 2012, the momo Crawl has blossomed into one of the neighborhood’s most popular seasonal events, showcasing the area’s vibrant Himalayan and South Asian community and its relatively under-appreciated food scene. Last year, the Jackson Heights Momo Crawl — now organized by Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) — brought out around 4,000 New Yorkers, a number this year’s festival likely surpassed, Thonden said.
For Thonden, whose mother is from Tibet, the event is just as much about recognizing the struggle and culture of the Tibetan people as it is about the food. Many participating vendors and patrons have family members who were impacted by the deadly flash floods that hit the China-Nepal border in late August, leaving more than 6,000 people dead or missing.
“When we receive bad news from Tibet, it hurts,” Thonden said. “Tibetans who come here never forget that we’re part of something bigger than ourselves.”
Tibetan and Himalayan presence in Queens is inseparable from the subjugation and human rights abuses Tibetans have long endured at the hands of the Chinese government, Thonden said, as many of the immigrants who now make up the local Himalayan community arrived here after fleeing persecution back home.
“I view the crawl mostly as an opportunity to get non-Himalayans engaged with our culture,” he said. “Hopefully, people come out for the one-dollar dumplings, and they’ll stay because they view it as an opportunity to learn more about the Himalayas and the cultures and struggles of our peoples.”
