The Butcher Man Of LEH

Slow food, immersive dining and conversations at the Café TBQ in Chalung House are a delight.

- Ahtushi Deshpande

I mindfully tap away on my laptop with a sense of inner calm and clarity. That my environment is highly coducive for my elevated state of consciousness is a given. From one window I can see the entire Stok range while the other looks into the vegetable garden and fields of Chalung House and the vast cirque of high mountains that surround Leh. While the scenery is calming, it is the whiffs from the kitchen that are distracting me. Little did I know when I checked into Chalung House, a Stok-view farmstay, that besides the peace and quiet I had also bought into one helluva gastronomic experience. For Shivender Sharma, the host, the rooms are incidental. The experience here is all about slow food, immersive dining and conversations.

With a background in micro finance, Shivender has travelled to remote parts of India and also around the world due to his stint with World Bank. He’s absorbed the culinary traditions of whichever location he’s visited. When he realised he couldn’t make much of a difference to peoples lives in the jobs he held, he gave it all up to follow his passion. But first he went through a few years of obsessive climbing. He’s climbed six 6,000 metre peaks in 16 days in Ladakh’s Changthang region. Post that he decided to follow his culinary leanings and came up with pop ups where he would curate an exclusive dining experience for small groups in Gurugram. Three years ago he took the concept to Ladakh and opened Café TBQ at Chalung House—a local residence leased to him.

Following my nose, I step out into the apricot garden to see Shivender in the process of smoking meats with a regular barbecue grill set. Marinated with his own special spice mix, without the use of preservatives or harmful salts, his smoked meats, especially the pork, fish and mutton, are outstanding. There are no pigs in Ladakh and this is probably the only place you will find good pork in Leh.