Hasher mangsho is a silken dish of duck simmered in spiced coconut milk. Its origins belong to southern Bangladesh, where coconut palms have been part of the area’s cuisine, culture and livelihoods for centuries.
Jesmin Ibrahim, the matriarch of the family that runs 9-month-old Roshona Bilash in Melrose Hill, traveled to her hometown in Bangladesh’s Barishal District in late spring, seeking inspiration to expand the new restaurant’s tight menu of snacks, curries, kebabs and biryanis. She was chasing down recipes she recalled from childhood. After returning to Los Angeles, she made hasher mangsho a special available most every day.
Duck isn’t her Western adaptation; it’s part of the local diet. The aromatics are common to the South Asian repertoire: a one-two hit of garlic and ginger, the sweeter cinnamon, clove and cardamom balancing the sharper cumin, powdered chile and coriander seed. In comes the coconut milk to smooth things out. It’s the specificity of the bird that reshapes the flavor equation. The overall richness is roastier. Imagine the savor that imbues duck-fat fries permeating an oniony, tingling, coffee-colored gravy.
It is rare in the heart of Los Angeles, even with our designated Little Bangladesh neighborhood, to dine on such a regionally precise specialty — from this or any part of the Indian subcontinent, really. In a casual, endearingly familial setting, Roshona Bilash gives us a compelling, often comforting taste of one Bengali lineage. The duck is an obvious standout. But the most rewarding meals tend to come together when those of us not fluent in the cuisine ask for help (sometimes lots of it) to navigate ideal dish pairings and employ vital condiments.
The restaurant returns Abul Ibrahim to professional stoves after nearly a quarter-century. He began cooking in the 1980s while at university in England, and then in the 1990s moved to Los Angeles and opened Deshi Food & Groceries on West 3rd Avenue with friends. Its steam tables have remained a wellspring of Bangladeshi cooking for decades, though Ibrahim stepped away from the business in the early 2000s after his first child was born.
That son, Sheikh Jibran, is now in his early 20s. He’s a constant presence at Roshona Bilash, as is his mother, Jesmin, and, in between her college studies, his sister, Aileen Fateha.
The fourth-wall veil between kitchen and dining room, separated by an ordering counter and a wall-mounted menu, is especially thin in their small space. You can overhear family members occasionally bickering. Jibran splits his time between preparing food and standing up front. Someone’s whirring spices in a grinder on a shelf next to the cooler of bottled water and sodas. You might ask for a certain bread or curry, and the reply is often, “Hold on, let me see if that’s ready,” and then there’s a rush to the back and some whispered exchanges before your answer arrives.
There’s an equal probability the reply is a bright “Yes, we have that” or “Sorry, that takes a while to make and it’s not quite ready yet,” delivered with an apologetic smile and creased brow. This is the rhythm of the place. You succumb to its heart and charm if you can show up with a relaxed mindset.
Where to begin, then? With the “Quick Bites” section listed in the menu’s upper left corner.
Shingara is a cousin, rather than twin, to the samosa. The pastry yields with a softer flakiness, and its squat pyramid form nestles a mildly seasoned potato filling. No one recommends it, but dollops of the “green sauce” listed on the menu — a smooth cilantro chutney — gives bites some welcome zip.
Like shingara, fuchka is a ubiquitous street food in Bangladesh, and very similar to India’s pani puri. Small, puffed, shatteringly thin wheat-flour shells contain spiced onions and chickpeas, and they’re usually topped with grated hard-boiled egg. Pour gently pungent tamarind water into the punched-out hole in the shell’s center, and eat them in one crunching, complex bite. Among the onslaught of flavors, the egg is rendered feathery, more texture than anything. The contrasts are even punchier if you ask for them with doi — yogurt sauce artfully spattered over top.
Besides the duck, Jesmin also recently introduced a hometown dish called chingrir jol bora: ground shrimp dumplings in coconut cream broth. Much of the cooking at Roshona Bilash centers meat: nihiri (stewed beef shank with bone marrow), tender lamb shank dripping gravy, ruddy kebabs pulled from the tandoor and platters of shiny rice flecked with beef or bone-in goat.
Chingrir jol bora evokes the seafood-abundant geography of south Bangladesh. Barishal sits along a river, one of many veining through the land that comprises the Ganges Delta and flows into the Bay of Bengal. Jibran mentioned in a phone interview that shaping the shrimp into dumplings is an unusual step — usually they’re left whole — but that his maternal grandmother took this extra care. Her family line included ancient royal heritage, and he surmises this refined variation might be carried down from those mostly lost traditions.
At an early dinner I found the rice dishes and curries muted, absent the cuisine’s telltale punch of mustard oil and spicy exclamation points. A conversation with Jibran, the restaurant’s most exuberant communicator, and some studying of British Bangladeshi cookbook author Dina Begum’s excellent and insightful “Made In Bangladesh” helped me ask some questions that can lead to a far more prismatic meal: It’s crucial to order two condiments, bhorta and achar.
A bhorta is really in a category of its own, a quintessentially Bengali mash of highly seasoned vegetables, and sometimes seafood or meat, in hundreds of variations. Sometimes they’re eaten as appetizers, but they usually stay on the table to intensify subsequent dishes.
Aloo (potato) bhorta is most common, but lately the Roshona Bilash team has been testing more intricate versions. One stunner: kanthal bichir bhorta, an intense mulch of jackfruit seed, fresh chiles and pounded fresh shrimp.
On a plate like morog polao — cumin-scented rice with chicken in fragrant yogurt sauce — Jibran encouraged me to order a side of dal, pour some over the rice and mash in the bhorta. The finishing touch: achar, a word that means pickle but here refers to more of a hot sauce made with Bengali ghost peppers in a gloss of mustard oil. Here was the longed-for mustardy punch.
I mentioned to Jibran how radically his guidance improved the experience, and he said he’d been thinking of adding some instructive language to the restaurant’s website. That could be useful, as would the family members more readily suggesting the small, vital, inexpensive additions that give meals far more character.
I love how close the cooking stays to tradition at Roshona Bilash. The one big exception is a rice-heavy, foil-wrapped burrito variant that Jibran created, with chopped hunks of chicken tikka running through its center.
“I like to take bites of the wrap dipped in the dal, like dipping a taco into birria,” Jibran said, grinning.
I prefer the duck and the shrimp dumplings over a fusion burrito, but I do find his L.A. equivalency very irresistible.
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