5 days ago
Humayunpur: Where Fermented Tea Leaf Salads and Korean Bakeries Celebrate Delhi's Diversity
Until recently, my understanding of northeastern Indian cuisine was shaped by a film.
Axone, a 2019 indie gem, follows a group of young northeastern women in Delhi on a fraught yet funny quest to cook a traditional dish for a wedding. The story, laced with themes of displacement, prejudice, and resilience, was a touching introduction.
But looking back, it was just a sampler – an amuse-bouche, if you will – for a much richer culinary world I hadn't yet begun to understand.
The full-course meal came this past weekend, thanks to an unexpected guide: Hemant Singh Katoch, historian, author, and perhaps one of the most qualified people in Delhi to bridge the cultural gap between the Indian mainland and the Northeast.
Hemant's scholarship is best known through Imphal-Kohima 1944, a deeply researched book on the pivotal World War II campaign that thwarted the Japanese advance through Northeast India into Burma.
But his time spent living and researching in the region–over five years across the Indian Northeast and Myanmar–also nurtured a deep appreciation for its overlooked cuisines.
We were joined by Esha Roy, an equally insightful companion and former Northeast bureau chief for The Indian Express. Her reporting, often among the few handful of national coverage of the region in mainstream Indian media, has shaped how many Indians understand issues from Nagaland to Manipur.
Our destination was The Grub House, a quiet eatery in Delhi's Humayunpur neighbourhood – essentially a microcosm of Northeast India in the capital. The place recently brought in a Burmese chef, and the menu reflects a shift: a willingness to present the cuisine without apology or fusion.
We began with Htamin Thoke, a rice salad with lightly fermented notes; Kyaukpwint Thoke, a sea mushroom salad rich with umami; and finally, the standout: Lehpet Thoke, or fermented tea leaf salad.
Salads in the Grub House. Photo: Faisal Mahmud.
This dish is a hidden treasure in Myanmar – equal parts texture and taste, where bitter fermented tea meets the crunch of roasted beans, fried garlic, and a whisper of chilli heat (likely from fermented shrimp paste, that glorious umami bomb Southeast Asia has long mastered). Every bite delivered a bright jolt – intense, unexpected, addictive.
The main course, Mohinga, is often called Myanmar's national morning dish. A fish-based broth with rice noodles, it's comfort food with depth – a cousin, perhaps, to Vietnamese pho or Thai khao soi, but with its own rustic complexity. Topped with crispy lentils and fried garlic, it became a bowl of warmth and surprise.
Beyond the boundaries
Most Indians know the Northeast through momos or generalised assumptions about 'tribal food.' Yet what I tasted was part of a much broader cultural and geopolitical landscape – one that includes ancient spice routes, the wartime legacy of the Burma campaign, and centuries of migration and exchange across what is now India, Myanmar, and Southeast Asia.
Food is never just food. It's a marker of identity, autonomy, and sometimes survival. For decades, the cuisines of the Northeast have been marginalised in India's national consciousness – reduced to side dishes or stigmatised for their unfamiliar ingredients and 'strong smells.'
This dinner felt like a quiet rebuttal to that dismissal, a celebration not just of flavour but of presence. After dinner, Hemant suggested we walk through the neighbourhood that – unlike much of sanitised, master-planned New Delhi – feels defiantly alive.
Tucked behind the diplomatic sheen of South Delhi, this compact enclave has quietly evolved into a cultural refuge for Northeastern Indian communities, migrants from Myanmar, and even waves of Korean students and professionals who've carved out a new sense of belonging in the capital.
Humayunpur. Photo: Faisal Mahmud.
If Connaught Place is colonial nostalgia and Gurugram is global capitalism on steroids, then Humayunpur is a reminder of the grassroots, immigrant-powered energy that actually defines urban life. Here, diversity isn't performative–it's the lived-in, crowded, and deliciously fragrant reality of shared existence.
You will find restaurants with names like Hornbill or Dzukou coexist with Korean grocery stores and Tibetan cafés. It's a pocket of pan-Asian coexistence in a city that too often flattens difference.
As Hemant pointed out favourite spots – Naga joints with smoked pork and bamboo shoot, Tibetan cafés with steaming momos and butter tea, Korean bakeries tucked beside Assamese thali houses – the neighbourhood unfolded like a map of quiet resistance. Every eatery is more than just a business; it's an assertion of identity in a city that often tries to homogenise everything outside the mainstream.
The streets hummed with something also rare in Delhi: a sense of community rooted in difference, not in spite of it. You could hear it in the easy laughter bouncing down narrow lanes, in the strains of Manipuri pop music mingling with Korean ballads, in the aromas of akhuni, ginger, garlic, and sesame oil spilling from kitchen vents.
It is, in every way, a grassroots counterpoint to the elite conversation about 'India's soft power.' You don't need government-sponsored fusion food festivals or televised state dinners when neighbourhoods like this exist – when the soft power of fermented tea leaves, smoked meats, and multilingual menus can speak for themselves.
By the time we left, the streets were still glowing. I couldn't help but feel that Humayunpur isn't just a place – it's a possibility. Of a city that doesn't flatten its people into one language or one cuisine or one face, but allows a hundred versions of 'home' to bloom in the same square mile.
Faisal Mahmud is the Minister (Press) of Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi.
