CHECK, PLEASE!(The Talk of the Town)(restaurants)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 21-MAR-05

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COPYRIGHT 2005 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Diners browsing their options on Macdougal Street who happened upon a restaurant called Babu in its first few weeks of opening, earlier this year, were met with several surprises. The first was the incongruity of finding a place like Babu--which is candlelit and hushed--in a strip of the Village better known for falafels and Formica tables. The second was the unfamiliarity of the cuisine, which comes from Calcutta and draws upon the traditions of the many different ethnic groups that have made that city their home, from the Chinese (shrimp toasts with sesame) to the Muslim (mutton cooked with yogurt) to the Bengali (fish steamed with mustard and green chili, wrapped in a banana leaf) to...

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