Doma Wang

Chef-Owner,  Blue Poppy Thakali

To know this formidable chef is to love her. Doma di, as she is fondly called by foodies in Calcutta, successfully runs her restaurant, carries out pop-ups across the country and fulfills her role as a grandmother, too.

A Rare Bloom

Interviewed by Malini banerjee

Drop in to Blue Poppy during a lunch rush and you are bound to spot a tall statuesque lady with salt and pepper hair and lips slicked with Mac’s Ruby Woo. “Doma Di!” someone is bound to greet her and if she knows them she will embrace them in a warm hug. That is one of the best things about Chef Wang. A chef, entrepreneur, mother and even a grandmother with years of cooking, and a smattering of awards to her name but for Calcutta and her foodies she is the lovable Doma Di (di is short for didi - big sister). To know her is to love her.

When I went to meet her she was running a Blue Poppy pop-up at the JW Marriott Kolkata. We meet in their hallowed executive lounge, with a stunning view of the Calcutta wetlands stretching into the horizon. Doma Di leaves all pretence and propriety aside to call a chef and address him in Nepali. “Khaye rah ayo. She ate before coming to meet me,” she says pointing at me and one hears a distinct reprimand in her voice. “Get a phalay for her no,” she says. Wang is heading a kitchen pop-up with him when we meet and things are hectic.

Over coffee we get down to her story.  “I was born in a small town in the hills, two hours from Darjeeling. Kalimpong was not a district then. My father was the principal of the Chinese school and also ran a noodle factory from home. We lived on the ground floor while the noodles were made on the floor above. I’ve had noodles rain on my face because they were always drying up top,” she laughs.

But despite ‘humble beginnings’ her father always made sure that there was “good food” at home. He would pick up prawns from the weekly market even though in a hill town far away from the big cities it was not cheap. A strict father, his “apology dish” was a simple prawn and egg fried rice. “Prawn and eggs tossed in butter with rice was also both of my daughters’ favourite,” she says, about the famous Popos Fried Rice, one of the bestsellers in Blue Poppy Thakali. It was her father who instilled in her the love for food and the idea that to truly appreciate it you must learn how to cook. “Rebelliously, I would say that I would have others do it for me. But he argued if I did not know myself I would not be able to teach others to cook the same food for me. His other rule was that food should look as good as it tastes,” she recollects. Those were the foundations that carried her through the rest of her life.

Wang did not always want to be a chef. A young mother, she was working as an interpreter for a Japanese Buddhist cultural organisation in Calcutta when her office decided to shift to Gaya in Bihar. Wang found herself in a quandary.

She was already known for her cooking so she decided to set up a home delivery system. Those days would be frantic – cooking from dawn to dusk delivering orders, sometimes in person. In Salt Lake, where she lived, she became a household name in the area delivering food on her Kinetic Honda. Slowly her business scaled up and she got the offer to run the restaurant in Sikkim House in Middleton Street.

Already a single mum with two children and running a successful home kitchen, life got busier. They were tasked with running the restaurant for breakfast lunch and dinner. Her two daughters would come to the restaurant after school and had early hands- on training with her. Sonam (her younger daughter) would often be on skates taking orders and yelling from across the tables, “Mumma, how do you spell steamed?” she would ask while taking orders.

Wang has come far since those days. A change in government meant that her tender was not accepted for the tourism department- run restaurant. But she knew well enough in advance to start Blue Poppy Thakali in the same compound in the building next door. Her regulars did not have to suffer since her restaurant remained in the heart of Calcutta’s business district. Blue Poppy Thakali went from strength to strength and her eldest, Sachiko aka Pucchu joined the fray, introducing current topsellers like Alu Cheese Momo as well as the Boma Asian Bakery.

One of her first feelings of accomplishment came when she represented Calcutta, and was felicitated, in a cookery event at The St. Regis Mumbai. It felt good to be recognised, she says.

“My humble handmade momo that I sold for Rs150 per plate was being served in a posh 5-star restaurant.”

Nepali Tibetan food is simple, she says. “There is no cashew paste, cream and cream cheese. I think when you can give cabbage and onion in a maida wrapper and make it taste good... to me that is a mark of a good chef,” she says.

One of her happiest she has felt was being ranked 19th among the country’s best chefs. “That made me believe in myself. I cooked because I loved food and at one point of time it was all I had to put my daughters through school. But to see chefs with big fancy degrees and grand educations and be ranked on the same platform as them felt unreal. It meant everything,” she relates.

Nowadays while Sachiko runs the restaurant in the city, Wang is often away touring and hosting pop-ups across the country. “Food is my way of keeping my heritage alive and passing on my father’s legacy,” she says simply.