Good Enough For Everybody

How Jyosana tries to film the shape of a feeling.

At Yaar, an Indian restaurant in Astoria, Sharad, the owner, stands nearby while Jyosana's brother and I are a makeshift crew, angling phone flashlights to light the garlic gobi. Jyosana is filming, centering plates on her tiny screen. "I love talking about food," she says. "Food is something you can always talk about. And why not bring that to the internet?"

She films New York restaurants, places serving what she calls, "food that's good enough for everybody." Sharad invited her here after his sister sent him Jyosana's 2024 travel vlog to Nepal. Though older, Sharad, like us, moved to the States young. He felt an immediate kinship in the way she documented the flavors they both grew up with. He recognized his own approximation in hers: two people trying to recreate something they can't fully access, finding each other in the attempt.

As Jyosana films, Sharad steps out of the kitchen with a steady stream of dishes, narrating his decisions as he goes. "Bone-in butter chicken," he says, gesturing at the plate, "Everyone orders boneless, but this is better." He nods toward the tandoori paneer, "This char took me months to get right in this kitchen."

We don't know what Sharad is measuring the char against, but we understand the impulse. Jyosana adjusts the camera to linger on the blistered edges. Sharad insists three dishes aren't enough, crowding the table with another basket of naan and a plate of shrimp biryani.

When the table is finally full—overlapping plates, nowhere left to set a glass-he offers chai, and the conversation turns to tea snacks. Our mothers both love roasted corn. Jyosana prefers khari biscuits, the flaky puffs she now buys at a storefront that used to be a 99-cent store and still half looks like one. Two new aisles now hold Nepali staples, while the discount shop remains.

I mention my own favorite: fresh, yeasty donuts from tea stalls in Kathmandu that I'd bring home for morning chai with my grandmother. "None of it tastes the same as back home," Jyosana says. It's a line we're used to hearing from our mothers, now coming out of our own mouths.

I wonder if it's earned. Our mothers knew what they were comparing it to—they had full mornings in Kathmandu, years of them, the accumulated weight of a life lived in one place. Everyone at this table has only fragments. We remember the shape of a feeling, that presence of a grandmother, and we try to fill in the gaps.

Sharad has been listening. "Cream-top milk," he offers, leaning in like he's sharing state secrets. "That's what you need for chai. It's fatty enough to get that silky texture." Food pulls everyone into the conversation. Even Jiwan, Jyosana's younger brother, indifferent to chai, folds in when Sharad disappears and reappears with a masala Coke for him to try. He offers a silent, surprised nod of approval.

Despite filming for years, Jyosana admits she still has to "hype herself up" before pulling out her phone. Most of her viewers are friends, and what she's trying to build isn't scale so much as credibility. Maybe if we film this plate just right, we can share the place we want to go back to, make it something that can be experienced again. At Yaar, that means waiting until the chai arrives, choosing how we translate what we've inherited, and trusting the table to hold the rest.