- So Santa Fe's got a population less 100,000 people
and smack dab in the middle of it is Paper Dosa.
It's a South Indian cuisine restaurant.
They're not doing tikka masala.
These guys are doing paper dosas from Chef Paulraj
who left San Francisco to follow his heart in Santa Fe.
Hey Chef.
- Hey Sheldon, welcome to Paper Dosa.
- Oh glad to be here.
- It's a South Indian restaurant.
You have many varieties of dosas.
- I'm excited, gonna be rolling out some stuff
and doing, making curries.
- Yeah, please, come on in, come on in.
- Okay.
Whoa, look at this spread!
There's a lot of ingredients that I don't recognize here.
Were you always in the kitchen?
- Until my twelfth standard in India,
I was not into the cooking.
I was good at math.
I wanted to be engineer.
- What made you go into culinary?
- In India what happens is, I am elder the person in my home.
So I want to help my dad immediately as soon as possible.
You can earn fast, that's why I got into culinary school.
This is the dosa batter.
Rice flour, and urad dal.
We keep it outside for like eight to 12 hours.
- Slight fermentation, almost like sourdough.
That is a master right there.
A little bit of ghee.
Look at that!
And this is a paper dosa, right there.
Beautiful.
You wanna hold my hand while I'm doing it?
- No (laughing)
- All right, I don't want you to get jealous
of my technique, all right?
- No it's fine, you can work with us...
- I'm just gonna pour it.
- Yeah.
- And then start from the middle?
- Yeah.
Beautiful.
Don't press hard.
Yeah, good job.
Okay, you can try one more time.
(laughing)
- No judgment yeah guys?
(laughing)
My first time.
(laughing)
That one passed.
- That's what I'm saying, you did good.
- Got my small one next to his one.
All right, I'm going all in.
- You gotta spread it.
Nice job Sheldon.
Beautiful.
- Oh, look at that?
Hired?
- You will be hired immediately.
This is the gunpowder dosa.
My mom made just now.
- Lucky, she got mom's hands in here.
Tell me about gunpowder, so what –
- The gunpowder is,
- Not real gunpowder?
- No this is a chutney powder.
Okay so we dry roast each and every lentil separately.
Curry leaves, and the red chiles.
Like this.
- Oh gunpowder, clack clack boom.
- [Paulraj] This is green chile cheese dosa.
- Green chili is not traditional southern Indian.
- It's not, it's it's not.
It's actually my wife's idea.
My wife is from Santa Fe.
And it turned out to be a nice dish.
- [Sheldon] So this is a good way to get the people
of Santa Fe into South Indian cuisine.
- [Paulraj] Absolutely, yeah.
- Whoa, that is a great one.
Look at that cheese melting like that.
You always knew that you'd go back
to doing a southern restaurant like this?
- No, but I fall in love in South Indian cooking
when I was in San Francisco.
- So you cook with your mom now?
- Yeah, now if she is in India,
I'll be calling her and will ask the recipes.
Yeah this is my home cooking.
- So growing up in Tamil Nadu, you were alongside
your mom cooking as a kid?
- No, I'm not a fan of cooking until I was like 16.
- So after three years and graduating culinary school,
you went to where?
- Maldives, so I worked for Reethi Beach Resort.
And then I got the opportunity to come to coast lines.
Miami to Key West, Key West to Cozumel,
and then I will come to Miami.
And the second one is Miami to Bahamas, Bahamas to Miami.
- How did you make your way all the way to San Francisco?
- My brother was in need of money
and I was earning like $750 at the shift.
My friend Sendal, who said "I have an opportunity
if you come I can give you a job."
And I gone to San Francisco through him.
He is really talented.
I am so lucky to have him teach me
the wonderful South Indian cooking.
- It took you going to San Francisco
to reconnect with your roots.
- Absolutely.
- That's the paper dosa.
- This is the paper dosa.
- The name of the restaurant.
- So your signature dish.
- It goes with goes with masala.
- Show me the way.
- Break the dosa and then we put in the chutney and sambal.
Coconut chutney is always goes with that.
Ginger, fried coconut, Thai chile, cilantro, salt.
Roasted channa dal.
- There's so many layers of flavor.
- There is.
And some people go with masala, and the chutney.
- Oh, double time.
- No, that is one.
And they go like this.
And they put with the sambal.
This is the main accompaniment for the dosas.
Boiled lentils, tomatoes, onions, red peppers,
all kinds of flavors in one pot.
Little bit of tomato puree and cilantro,
a lot of cilantro.
And then we'll add some tempering.
This is just rice bran oil,
mustard seed, red chiles, and curry leaves.
It gives extra flavor for the curries.
- Cheers chef.
- Cheers.
- Thank you.
- Cheers Sheldon, thank you.
- Whoa, it's an explosion of flavors.
The green chile dosa.
- Thank you.
- For you chef.
Mmmm.
- You like the spice?
- There's a good spice to it.
The fermentation that is in the dosa,
that makes it so unique.
Was this an immediate hit?
- It was, it was, like lot of Santa Fe people like it.
- Tell me about the meeting of your wife.
- When I worked in San Francisco first in 2005,
she also worked in Dosa as the waitress.
That's how we met.
We got married in 2007.
I cannot live in San Francisco and have a family.
My wife said we should move to Santa Fe.
And just I followed my wife here.
It all worked out slowly.
- How did you start cooking in Santa Fe?
- I was doing the catering out of my house.
But we didn't do that good to pay the bills.
So, wife's friends were saying,
okay why don't you do a Valentine's Day dinner?
That pop-up was so magical,
because I didn't even have a proper stove.
And lot of people who worked,
they didn't even want to get paid.
But they want to lift me up,
that's what I saw with the Santa Fe people.
There are a lot of restaurant owners,
particularly Cafe Fina, Sweetwater restaurant,
MU Du Noodles, these all people helped me
with opening the restaurant
for me to do the pop-ups.
- So in March of 2015, you had the opportunity
to open up this place.
- The first six months it was crazy.
- So where did you get your workers?
- I have one of my friends, Tito,
he is the backbone of my restaurant.
We worked together in San Francisco as well.
And he came to help.
Within three months he fell in love
and he got married as well.
- Okay in Santa Fe.
It's amazing the story of love
and how this all kind of came together.
- And on top of that you give jobs to the people.
I was looking for the job in Santa Fe.
That's the most happy thing I can think about
is I'm glad I can give jobs to people.
- [Sheldon] If you take care your community,
that the community is gonna come back and take care of you.
- You know we're gonna transfer in the saute pan.
And then we're gonna top it with the coconut sauce.