Note:
(a) online title, and subtitle: Why Does This Tibetan Kitchen Also Cook Sichuan Food? Nha Sang, in Queens, reflects the recent history of its owners' homeland.
(b) "shapaley * * * Nha Sang [Cuisine & Culture: full name] in Elmhurst, Queens * * * Behind doors decked with Tibetan prayer flags is a double-height [ceiling twice as high] modern space, painted nutmeg brown, with more than 100 seats on the ground floor * * * The dark wood tables and tall simulated-leather chairs * * * large, intergenerational families, the youngest children tearing off strips of steamed dough from fist-size braids of tingmo before shakily passing the bread to their grandparents. * * * Running above this bench is a backlighted transparency of Lhasa, a panoramic view of the capital city’s palaces and temples rising from the two-mile-high Tibetan Plateau. * * * Chusang Nhasang [hence the restaurant name] opened the restaurant in May with her [siblings and parents]"
(i) For shapaley, see sha phaley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sha_phaley
(ii)
(A) Elmhurst, Queens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmhurst,_Queens
(" 'Elmhurst,' meaning 'a grove of elms' ")
(B) English dictionary:
* hurst (n; fromOld English): "(rare outside place names) a wood or grove) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hurst
(iii) prayer flag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prayer_flag
(iv) The "simulated leather" in collinsdictionary.com is same as "imitation leather" in merriam-webster.com or "artificial leather" in other sources.
(c) "This is the second Nha Sang the Nhasangs have owned. The first was in Burnsville, Minn, outside Minneapolis, where they settled after immigrating from Tibet. The Minneapolis area has the second-largest Tibetan community in the United States. Nevertheless, the Nhasangs hedged their bets, fluffing out their menu of Tibetan dishes with General Tso's chicken, Thai and Vietnamese curries, and a few recipes — like walleye in jalapeño-basil sauce * * * The family closed the original Nha Sang last year and moved from the second-largest Tibetan community to the largest pNew York City or Queens]. With their new restaurant in Queens, they eighty-sixed the walleye. General Tso has lived to fight another day [they retain the dish], along with a few other Chinese takeout staples. Almost everything else on Nha Sang's menu is either Tibetan or Sichuan. The two cuisines are not often found together in Queens, but they are in Asia. The largest population of Tibetans outside Tibet [in the world] lives in Sichuan's capital, Chengdu. * * * The Nhasangs themselves are from Ngaba, which is in the Amdo region of northeastern Tibetan, a cultural borderland where Tibetan and Sichuan traditions meet. China has decreed that Ngaba is within Sichuan Province. If you are rooting for Tibetan identity to survive, you may find the restaurant's double-barreled [borrowed from a rifle with double barrels rather than one] menu unnerving"
(i) English dictionaries:
(A) fluff
(n): "DOWN"
(vt): "to make fluffy <fluff the pillows>" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fluff
(B) fluff: "Fluff is a light, soft mass, such as cotton or a cloud * * *
To fluff something means to shake or puff out something, as with pillows. When you fluff your hair, you might shake it out a bit so that it puffs up and looks fluffy." https://www.dictionary.com/browse/fluff
(C) fluff sth out/up: "phrasal verb[:] to make something appear bigger or fuller by hitting or shaking it so that it contains more air" https://dictionary.cambridge.org ... sh/fluff-sth-out-up
(ii)
(A) walleye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walleye
(section 1 Etymology)
(B) walleye(n) and wall-eyed (adj) on the same Web page. https://www.etymonline.com/word/walleye
(iii) What Does 'Eighty-Six' Mean? https://www.merriam-webster.com/ ... -six-meaning-origin
(iv) For Ngaba, see Ngawa County 阿坝县. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngawa_County
(iv) double-barrelled https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-barrelled
(d) "ping-sha riri, which is almost but not quite a soup, made from drenching a squiggly bowlful of cellophane noodles in dark, oily liquid seasoned with beef and fragrant with Sichuan peppercorns. * * * shapta, a classic Tibetan meat stir-fry * * * Nha Sang's thentuk can be ordered with or without spice. Without, it is a fairly quiet soup of vegetables and ragged squarish hand-pulled noodles the size of Wheat Chex * * * The shapaley, those fried Tibetan turnovers, are stuffed only with beef [in that restaurant]. * * * For dessert there is tsampa ice cream sprinkled with powdered tsampa, or a tsampa cake. Tsampa — toasted barley — is a defining flavor of Tibet's high-altitude cooking. It is also a symbol of Tibetan identity. Barley on barley [remenber 'tsampa ice cream sprinkled with powdered tsampa'?] is a little austere for some palates, but you do not come to Nha Sang for symphonies of dense custard and shattering tuile."
(i) Neither "ping-sha riri" nor shapta is found anywhere in the Web -- except this NYT review, that is.
(ii) For thentuk, see thenthuk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thenthuk
(iii) tuile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuile