If Mom were from Bangladesh

Bengal Cafe in Cambridge. (File photo)

So you're sitting in a restaurant -- Vietnamese, Indian, Ecuadoran -- a small, family-run place where the cooks and the waiters speak the language that matches the cuisine. You're enjoying your dinner when you look over and see that some of the staff members are sitting down to eat. What are they having? Is it what you're having? You crane your neck to peek.

It's not what you're having. It looks more authentic, unaltered for New England taste buds. It looks like something Mom would make if Mom were from Vietnam, India, or Ecuador. Which makes you wonder: What kind of food do the chefs cook at home? And how can you get them to invite you over for dinner?

At Bengal Cafe, which bills itself as a home-style Bangladeshi restaurant, it's as if you managed to finagle that invitation. You can see Nasrin Imam, head chef and wife of owner Ali Imam, cooking in the small kitchen, which indeed looks home-style. When you order chicken, you soon smell chicken frying. (Warning: This is also the case with goat.) To get to the bathroom, you exit the saffron-colored dining room and prance right through the work space -- there are bowls of chopped onions and raw meat on the counter, a small prep station, and a no-frills stove. A friend of the Imams who works at the restaurant might be back there eating. And it looks just like what you're eating.

As it turns out, this authenticity has its ups and downs. An appetizer called fuchka ($3.99) is an up: A well-spiced mixture of chickpeas and corn, it's served in a bowl, accompanied by a plate of small, UFO-shaped puffed crackers and some tamarind sauce. Poke a hole in the delicate wall of a puff, spoon in some chickpeas, and drizzle sauce on top. Then pop it in your mouth. The crisp shell gives way to the spiciness of the chickpeas and corn, which is then cooled by the sauce. It's an interactive treat.

But beef sheekh kebab ($9.99), at least on the night we try it, is a down. The beef, grilled on skewers, looks shriveled and forlorn, marooned on a white plate. When we bite into it, it's fibrous, like Bangladeshi beef jerky. Fortunately, we also order a dish called boot gosht ($8.99) that more than makes up for the disappointing kebab. We slurp down tender chunks of beef and soft, soupy lentils flavored with Bangladeshi spices. Also delicious is begun dolma ($6.49), eggplant cooked in sweet-and-sour sauce. Laced with tiny green chilies, it's hot, tangy, and complex.

Most Bangladeshi food, however, isn't particularly fiery or spice-reliant, according to Ali Imam. "If you put a lot of spices in the vegetable," he says, "you will not get the taste of the vegetable. You'll get the taste of the spice." Nor does the cuisine incorporate heavy cream, as food from some regions of India does. "It's lighter," he says.

Be that as it may, many of the dishes at Bengal Cafe go heavy on the oil. Both chicken jalfrezi ($7.99) and the cumin-packed chicken zirra ($7.99) are swimming in it, but the dark meat, still on the bone, is moist and rich, not the pallid chicken that sometimes comes in Indian dishes and can't stand up to rich sauces.

To wash it all down, there are beverages familiar and less so. On one visit, we try borhani ($1.95), a drink of yogurt, mint, salt, pepper, and mustard seed. It's light and grassy-tasting, with a hit of mint at the end. Some find it pleasant and refreshing. Others don't. "It tastes like a vegetable frappe," says one. Everyone at our table, however, agrees that salty lassi ($1.50), which smells like overboiled eggs, does not appeal to New England taste buds.

At the end of the meal, firni ($3), a custardy, blenderized rice pudding, goes well with a steaming cup of masala tea ($1.50). Nasrin Imam doctors the drink with plenty of milk and sugar. "I always drink it that way, even though sugar isn't good for me," she says. When we ask her what spices are in the chicken zirra, she tells us step by step how to make it: "Fry cumin seed in oil first . . ." She has a tiny bit of ginger stuck to her face. Ali Imam is in the kitchen, holding their 3-year-old daughter. This is real-person food, not fancy chef food.

Bengal Cafe opened about a year ago with the goal of providing students cheap, tasty meals. It is the Imams' first restaurant, and they're still learning, says Ali, who also works at Whole Foods. (He came to this country in 1992; back home in Dhaka he was a banker.) The family has filled its menu with intriguing dishes we haven't heard of before and are curious to try. If some of them haven't quite been perfected yet, so be it. It's worth it to eat food just like Mom would make if Mom were from Bangladesh.