An interview with Bikash Kharel, manager and co-owner of While in Kathmandu

(Editor: You can read the full review of Bikash’s restaurant, While in Kathmandu)

Bikash: I could talk for days.

Bushyridge: I’m getting that, yeah. So did you grow up here?

Bikash: I grew up here. In Ridgewood, yeah.

Bushyridge: Were you born here?

Bik: I was born back home in Nepal. 

Bushy: How old were you when you moved here?

Bik: 12? I was 11 1/2? 12?

Bushy: So old enough to remember.

Bik: Old enough to remember, but not old enough to have a lot of baggage, you can kinda move on and grow up. So for like my sister and brother, they were almost in high school already, so it was that phase in life, that, it’s pretty hard to get away. Versus me, i was in middle school, sixth grade so, it makes it easier. 

Bushy: It seems like there’s a pretty good Nepalese community here…

Bik: Good? I mean…Because of gentrification and the changes that’s happening in the neighborhood, the number has gone down maybe 30 or 40%, over the last four years maybe? We had like, maybe 4500 people [Nepalese] in Ridgewood, Fresh Pond area, but the changing prices, housing, gentrification of everything, apartments going from $1000 or $1200 to $2500 or $3000, so easily in the last few years, that a lot of Nepali people can’t afford it anymore, so they’re moving out.

Bushy: Your sister was telling me that there’s like, three regions of Nepali food? There’s the mountains—

Bik: YUP!

Bushy: and the plains…

Bik: the Terai is like, the plains, and then you have the mountains, and then you have the hills. Nepal topography is basically that, the uppermost part by Tibet region is all mountainous, the Himalayas region and all that over there. The midland is flat land, and the topmost part is all hills. God gifted the country by nature, it has everything that a country needs. 

Bushy: What about the food here, would you consider it from the hills or—

Bik: It’s a mix of all three, it’s a mix of all three. Before I opened this restaurant, before the inception of the whole idea of While in Kathmandu, I was already working for my father down the block at the other restaurant [Nepalese Indian, on 907 Seneca Ave), and I was already keen on the idea of opening a Nepali place, and giving definition to what Nepali food can be in mainstream cuisine, I saw that pretty early on. There’s the demand for Indian food and, with the recent changes in the neighborhood, initially when that first place opened up it had a pretty decent Nepali menu but, that whole base of customers, that didn’t work out, you know, it got dropped from the menu and replaced with Tikka Masala, Butter Chicken, dishes that are popular of course, people know that food. Versus the change the gentrification brought, and when I say that word, you know, not in a negative term, but the whole idea of gentrification, when that change happened, the growth of people that that brought in, the crowd of people that are more open to different things, they’re more open to ideas, so I was still running that restaurant in 2014, and that was the early phase of gentrification, a lot of change happening, the housing market changing, and the new customer base that I started seeing was people of, you know, my age group, in their 20s and 25s and 30s, young people that want to talk about Nepal, that know more about Nepal. So I was already keen on the idea to open a place that’s more like a cafe, and not too much like a formal restaurant, like almost like a dive bar, almost like a tea shop, that you can hang out in.

Bushy: How do you explain Nepali food to people who don’t know what it is?

Bik: Food is all about comfort. At the end of the day, food is all about comfort. Once you start feeling comfortable you’ll come back for more, so when I train my people I tell them the same thing: break it down, visualize it. One of my breads is Bara bread, lentil bread. I called it a lentil pancake-style bread. That gives you as, somebody who’s not familiar with Nepali cuisine, gives you at least a 20% picture of what it might be. Some kind of idea. Once you have some kind of idea you’re excited about it. Once you’re excited about it you’re going to enjoy that food somewhat. If you walk in with a group of ten people, and there’s one person who has never tried anything, outside of their comfort zone, if they see Kathmandu Alfredo, they’ll know that it’ll be a pasta of some sort. And they’ll go for that. So it includes everybody. 

Bushy: So the fusion is sort of your way in, your way of making people a little bit more comfortable—

Bik: Basically the fusion is kind of a way in, for people that are not as comfortable with food out of their comfort zone, so like, “at least hey, I know what Alfredo is, so maybe I’ll give it a shot.” It’s that opening up, like with Kathmandu poppers, explaining things a certain way…skewers are basically barbecued meat, so you know what to expect, it’s a grilled meat, you understand that. Making the menu very easy to understand, for the kitchen first, was very important. Both of the chefs I have right now, are not trained chefs. I trained them. My father, he trained us, I trained under him, then he trained me and I trained them [the chefs]. So that’s the hierarchy. I run the place, I’m very proud of it, it’s my design, my decor, but uh, still a long way to go. 

Bushy: So tell me the story of the restaurant—where did you get your inspiration from, what made you want to open it? 

Bik: So in 2016 I was still running the other restaurant, the one I managed with my father, we had one in Park Slope, another one a little further down in Fort Greene. So I’m a musician, I make music. So for me, I dropped out of college specifically to make music. I was going to move to Cali so I could just start something new but my father ended up taking his restaurant from his partners, so I was like “maybe I’ll stay back and help him out.” The plan was to stick around for six months before I moved out, but then once you start making money, you start making money. So 2016, we had this family reunion back home. My family, both my mother’s side and my father’s side, nobody’s back home, everybody is in Europe or in America, so we had this very great, grand, get-together, that all the families from all over the world came back home. So I went back, I was back home, it was a fun time, it was supposed to be for two weeks but I ended up staying for two months. So I was there already, I was like, “let me make some music happen.” So I was there, working on a mixtape called, “While in Kathmandu”, that was the name, cause I was in Kathmandu building a hip-hop mixtape, traveling a lot, and I’d already been producing for twelve years so I deal with a lot of people in the hip hop industry [Bikash’s stage name is Funky Buddha] so, got to meet a few people who were big, players in the industry at that time. People were…not loving the industry at that time, so for me I was like, “I’m better off going back and, you know, trying to figure it out in New York.” So when I came back, I had this hangover for the name, “While in Kathmandu”. My father wanted to do something new, a new business that would be a Nepali bistro cafe style of restaurant, that is not a restaurant, rather a tea shop, like a cafe, with Nepali breakfasts, something brand new. One of the things I’ve always encountered at any restaurant is that business is always busy in the nighttime, from 5 to 10pm. So we had the bold idea of, daytime service, lunch, maybe breakfast, moving away from the idea of, “Rice is curry, curry is dinner” to, “Nepali food can be exciting, it can be lunch, it can be a cute little date for two people.” That was the direction that we wanted to move into. And I fell in love with it! Cause I was just back from home, it’s got a nice little big back yard, there’s like five different trees out there, and I was like, “This is it. Those two months worth of memories [from Kathmandu] are going to be intact, I’m going to keep it alive, and everything that i’ve experienced in the last two months from traveling and the food, I”ll put out there and build something out of it.” And that sort of gave birth to what While in Kathmandu is now. 

Bushy: Was it hard, doing it with your parents? I imagine they might be a little bit more traditional…

Bik: That was one of the biggest problems. Old school investors, they want to secure their investment. One of the biggest things that I had to challenge was, this idea that, “this place that I’ve invested a lot of money in, is just going to sell coffee and a few things on the menu?” It was very crazy to them. I mean I understand, I grew up in Ridgewood and Bushwick and I understand the culture, I understand the trends. I understand where things are going, but, the old-school investor don’t open up as much. The very first menu we had, there were only four things, just breakfast, momo, and teas and coffees. That was hard convincing, on making them understand, so, I started taking them out to cafes, to new restaurants and bars in the neighborhood, that was happening, showing them what it actually meant to do this. The idea is to kind of explore the new school idea of restaurants. I saw that the old school style of Indian restaurants was running out of business, they don’t have a lot of dine-in business, and as it is the online business [delivery apps] are taking 30%, cutting into your margins, and you don’t have as much dine-in, you have deliveries and it’s not profitable business. Trying to turn that into a floor business is what I sold them on, showing them different places. Bunna cafe [a vegetarian Ethiopian spot in Bushwick] is one of the places that got them convinced, because my mom is a vegetarian, my sister is a vegetarian, and so, it was a very predominantly vegan place, and exposing that to them it was like, “if this can work we can make our thing work.” So it’s taken us to different places, showing them what it is that we’re trying to build. But the Nepali community they still thought I was crazy, for a long time. It wasn’t until the NYTimes article came out and they were like, “oh wow, they appreciate lentil bread, and they appreciate the unique identity of Nepali food that has never been in the market before.” Before that, people were telling me I’m crazy. Okay I’m crazy, that’s okay. 

Bushy: Tell me something you screwed up when you first opened up? What was a miscalculation? 

Bik: We wrapped up a segment today for ABC, they’re featuring us for a 90-second thing, so we’re get published on that in like two weeks. So I was having a conversation with my kitchen staff, when that NY Times article happened, and that slammed us with a lot of people, and I was not ready. I was not ready at all. And I had always read this, that if a critic from the NY Times visits you, you’re either going to do very very good, or you f$cked up. So I was in the middle, cause when people came up my menu was still so small, I had four or five things. But what that really did was I could not build a re-visit value, because they saw the menu was not big enough, at that time. But I also don’t mind that, it’s not a screw-up, it was an opportunity that I could’ve used better.

Bushy: What’s something I should read or listen to on the subway on my way here? 

Bik: I’ve done a lot of these but nobody’s asked me this question! Okay, one song that I would recommend is, “Nepethya”, they are a Nepali rock band that focuses on a mix of folk and rock.  So Nepali traditional folk mixed with the rock music, soft rock, pop rock, so there’s a lot of feels to it. 

Bushy: What’s a restaurant in the neighborhood that you would recommend?

Bik: Bunna cafe, it’s not in the neighborhood but it’s close enough. It’s one of my favorite places because, it’s a place I can take my family. My mom is a very strict vegetarian, but I have faith in that place and the owners are very nice. It’s one of my favorite places in Bushwick. Beyond that I’m still trying to explore my neighborhood, I’ve been busy tied up in my own place for the last two years, so I do not know what new places are opening, so I want to do that. 

Bushy: What’s the hardest part of owning and running your own restaurant?

Bik: You don’t have a life! I mean, I’ve been in restaurants since I was 13 with my father, and it’s driving me crazy. I go to my studio after work, everyday, I’m trying to finish my album, so I’ll be there until 4 or 5 in the morning, sleep for 4 or 5 hours, then be back in the restaurant. So much crap happening, so I’m pretty sure for every single restaurant owner, they are missing out on having a life, by owning a restaurant. And it’s so hard, it’s so hard, cause there’s so much money that is invested, there are so many people that depend on you, and it’s a very difficult position that you have to be in. so finding that balance is very important. Trying to find the balance of work life. 

Coming to New York even though I was a different race, even though I had an accent, I was in a whole different world, hip-hop made me comfortable. The people that I associated with in hip-hop made me feel comfortable, so that gave me a little ease of mind for the next three or four years that I could find myself and be more comfortable. one of the biggest problems for immigrants in America is finding comfort, before you can actually be something by yourself, because you know, you lose that four or five years, just trying to understand what’s happening around you.