Welcome to Bite This, in which L.A. TACO points you to a single dish worth seeking out in L.A. and one you definitely don’t want to miss when dining at the restaurant that serves it.
Growing up in Southern California, my brother and I would slice avocados from the family tree in half, fill the exposed cavity with a fresh, liquidy, store-bought salsa roja, and scoop out all the guts with a chunk of French bread or stale tortilla, reveling in the collision of soft and chewy textures and vibrant and sweet flavors.
Surya Kumar, the executive chef at Santa Monica’s modern Indian restaurant Fitoor, does this trick one better, filling two halves of a large Haas avocado with creamy burrata cheese to the point of overflow, then making it rain with tiny, fried filaments of crispy nylon sev, made in house with chickpea flour. Kumar signs this dish with two big dots of a mint chutney and two of his date chutney, crowning it all with an edible viola flower on top.
This dish speaks to me as an avocado-adherent West Coaster and fanatic of delicious street food. It’s California seen through a Subcontinental lens, a carnival of textures both crunchy, creamy, and smooth, with all the tart, sweet, and savory micro-explosions of flavor found in the genre of Indian snacks known as chaat.
To chef Kumar, the dish addresses the challenge of transferring the pleasures of Indian street food to a regional fine-dining restaurant that resonates with Californian sensibilities.
“There are so many Indian street foods that people don't know about; the flavors, textures, and things,” he tells L.A. TACO. “Over here, we get good avocados, which people use in different ways. So I thought, ‘let me turn it in an Indian way,’ where it suits each and every one.”
Though not evident to the eye, Kumar bolsters the sauces with onion, garlic, yogurt, coriander, and green chilies to endow the dish with flavors reminiscent of India. The burrata filling each avocado half is the only element not made in house.
“Chaat is nothing but a lot of flavors in one dish,” Kumar says. “Everyone has seen [avocado] in Mexican restaurants, as a mash, or something else. No one has tasted it like a sweet and savory kind of thing, which gives it a lot of flavor. Avocado is the sweetest part, right? So why can't we put in some tangy? Why can't we put another flavor? Avocado is a fruit, so whatever flavors we give, it accepts in that way.”
We recommend trying the dish whenever you get a chance. Here’s the breakdown:
Dish Name: Avocado Burrata Cheese Chaat
Price: $19
Where to find it: Fitoor ~ 1755 Ocean Ave. Santa Monica, CA 90401
