Most travellers simply see Siliguri as a place they must visit to continue their journey rather than being a destination to explore.
During this time, they will only see the eating facilities available near the bus stand and the sleeping accommodations that offer a night’s stay as an added convenience for departure the next day. I, too, went through the same narrative twice before and imagined Siliguri as just an intermediate destination worth passing through.
However, on my third visit, one of the landslides stopped me from going to Kalimpong and instead gave me a chance to spend an extra day in Siliguri, which later turned out to be one of the best experiences in the city because of what I got to eat that day.
The momo situation, which is more complicated than it sounds
I’d had momos in Siliguri before, in the generic form available near the main market, and found them adequate without being memorable. What I hadn’t done was follow the recommendation of the hotel owner, who, on my third visit, with the particular authority of someone who eats in his own city rather than performs it for visitors, directed me toward a small place near Hong Kong Market run by a Tibetan family that had apparently been making it. They had been using the same recipe for long enough that it had become the benchmark rather than a version of someone else’s.
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The momos here were steamed rather than fried, filled with a pork and ginger mixture that had a cleanliness of flavour I hadn’t expected, and served with a chutney that had enough heat to be present without overwhelming the filling. I ate a full plate and seriously considered a second before deciding that leaving some appetite for the rest of the day was the more responsible choice.
I went back that evening for the fried version and confirmed that the kitchen made both equally well, which is not always the case.
The evening market and what it smelled like
Siliguri’s evening market near the Bidhan Road area runs a food section that I’d walked past on previous visits without stopping, always having somewhere else to be. With an extra evening and no particular agenda, I stopped properly and spent an hour moving between stalls without any specific goal beyond following whatever looked interesting.
The churmur here, a street snack made from crushed puchka shells mixed with spiced potato, tamarind water, and onion, was the kind of preparation that rewards eating at the stall rather than taking away, since the texture depends on consuming it within approximately ninety seconds of assembly.
A stall selling thukpa a few metres away was doing enough business that a queue had formed, which I joined without any particular certainty about how long it would take. It took fifteen minutes. The thukpa was a clear broth version rather than the wider, cream-based variety I’d had in Himalayan towns further up, and the noodles were hand-pulled rather than dried, which gave them a texture that the standard version doesn’t replicate. I ate it standing at a small counter and felt considerably better about the enforced extra night than I had when the landslide was first reported.
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What Siliguri’s food scene offer?
The city’s position at the junction of multiple regional traditions means its food doesn’t have the singular identity that places with a more homogeneous cultural history tend to develop. What it has instead is a range that reflects its geography: momos from the Tibetan and Nepali communities, fish curry from the Bengali population, North Indian snacks running alongside all of it, and the particular chaat adaptations that develop when a preparation travels and gets reinterpreted by people with different ingredient instincts.
Several hotels in Siliguri sit close to the main market areas and the residential lanes where the less obvious food happens. This allows navigating between them on foot to be entirely practical, and that walkability is what made the accidental discoveries possible.
