The National Dish of Bhutan

Now I can say it. I've tried the national dish of Bhutan, ema datsi. When I ate it I was unaware that Ruth Reichl had declared that Bhutanese cooking was "well known to be the world's worst cuisine." I'm sure there are other contenders, but based on my experience of the "national dish" I can safely say it's clearly not one of the world's best. Of course, not having tried it on its home turf, I probably had an adulterated version of the national dish, for better or worse.

My opportunity to try ema datsi occurred Saturday afternoon at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, a free, annual event on Washington, D.C.'s mall, where Bhutan's culture, in addition to that of Texas, is being featured this year. The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is one of the world's most isolated countries. Tourism to this small nation of 650,000 is strictly limited, and to high-end tour groups only, an effort to protect the country's fragile, traditional culture and "gross national happiness" from the tourist hordes. The Folklife Festival, which continues this Wednesday through Sunday, gives Americans a rare opportunity to witness the music, dance and artisanal traditions of Bhutan.

I'm reasonably certain that there are no Bhutanese restaurants in the U.S., so the honor of preparing the country's national dish for the festival went to a D.C.-area Indian restaurant called Indique Heights. Based on descriptions I've read of the dish, they seem to have modified it for American spice tolerance. The main components of ema datsi are cheese and chiles, augmented by potatoes and onions (in addition I detected a slight cilantro accent). Apparently the true Bhutanese version is extremely spicy. The festival version prepared by Indique Heights was rather mild. Also, in Bhutan the dish is made with yak cheese, but I believe a substitute cheese had to be used here. Ultimately, what you get is a watery, yellow cheesy sauce with peppers, onions and potatoes that seems hardly Himalayan at all. If anything, it resembles a sauce for mac and cheese or a topping for nachos. It wasn't especially bad, it wasn't especially good, but now I (along with thousands of other festivalgoers) have bragging rights to say that I've tried the Bhutanese national dish. Or a reasonable facsimile thereof. For what it's worth.