THE DISH: Renowned chef stops in for chaat at Punjabi Dhaba

May 27—For her new special, "Lidia Celebrates America: Flavors that Define Us," which airs Tuesday on PBS, Lidia Bastianich shares the stories of five immigrant communities around the U.S. the best way she knows how: through food.

"I enter a community, since I am a chef, through food, and I find that food really opens all the doors," said the Emmy award-winning public television host and best‐selling cookbook author. "It is heartwarming, it's inviting, it's wanting somebody (to be) well, it is the basic communicator through all of us. I think we all need to eat and we can communicate if we share food with each other."

Bastianich shares stories of immigrants who share a little of their native country through their own foods. During the course of the program, she visits Ukranians In Hartsville, S.C.; the country's first elected Nepali-Bhutanese city councilman in Reynoldsburg, Ohio; a Cuban restaurateur and musician in Louisville, Ky.; and a Vietnamese-American chef in Houston, Texas. She also hosts a potluck with chefs of different ethnicities who share their culture in their dishes.

Among her stops is a special one in Bakersfield, meeting immigrants from the Indian state of Punjab including farmers and Balvinder Singh Saini, who owns the food truck Punjabi Dhaba.

That name may seem familiar to those who keep up with local food news. The truck, which Saini and his wife, Mansi Tiwari, started running in 2016, enjoyed a write-up in 2019 from New York Times critic at large Tejal Rao and expanded its customer base. Along with some international and East Coast diners, interest increased from throughout the state.

"I never thought that the people from the Bay Area or San Diego and L.A. will also come. We opened as a food (truck) for truckers but then everybody started coming. Before it was 95% truckers less than 5% tourists. Once it came (out) in the New York Times, there was like 50% tourists and 50% truckers. So that was a big surprise."

A 2020 Eater LA article on best dishes with an entry by senior editor Farley Elliott also drew a lot of interest especially from Southern California. (For reference, Elliott recommends the butter chicken, paratha (flatbread) and samosa chaat, with broken-up pieces of the fried pastry served over chole masala, a curry made with large chickpeas.)

Prior to owning the food truck, Saini had been a truck driver but found that life on the road took an added toll on his health. Deciding to bring the healthy and delicious Punjabi food they had made at home to a wider audience, the couple became the fifth owners of the Punjabi Dhaba business, which was originally located on South Union Avenue.

For the last year, the restaurant has been located at 16020 Costajo Road off Highway 99 at the Arvin/Bear Mountain Boulevard exit. The truck is set up behind the now-closed Harvest Steakhouse.

Bastianich visited the truck at this location for a visit that left a big impression on the women in Saini's family. Along with his wife, Saini said his mother, aunt and sister were also there for filming.

"I think that the ladies were very happy," he said. "They were all dressed up in the traditional Indian Punjabi dress and everybody was happy to be on camera. Because I think sometimes it's maybe not a big thing for Lidia to make a show, but it's a very big thing for someone on the opposite side to be on the show. Maybe it's a life's achievement or whatever."

Having seen a trailer of their segment, Saini said his family is looking forward to watching the episode when it airs.

Representatives from the BBC have been in contact about chef Nadiya Hussain possibly also filming something at the food truck.

Bakersfield diners will also be excited to learn that Saini is gearing up for a second location on Panama Lane near Wible Road.

The new truck, set to open later this year, will focus more on street food than the curries.

"That will be like a more handy food like an Indian-style burger, then what we say Indian chaat (roadside snacks). Indo-Chinese food more like Manchurian," he said referring to a dish of roughly chopped and deep-fried meat or vegetables that is then sautéed in a soy-based sauce.

"It's not Indian. It's not Chinese. It's Indo-Chinese."

In addition to visiting with Saini and his team at the food truck, Bastianich also heads slightly north during the program's local segment, meeting 109-year-old farmer Major Brar and his wife as well as visiting with Pawan Gil, whose father and many uncles emigrated from Punjab to become farmers.

"Punjab in India is the breadbasket of India," Gil tells the host. "For Punjabis, farming, agriculture, it is a part of our DNA. So the Central Valley becomes a complete extension of that."

The pair meet Gil's uncle Surinderpal and cousin Sukhpal, who own Gil & Sons Farm in Delano.

Surinderpal Gil tells Bastianich that families from Punjab have long been farming in the valley, helping those who come after them. He said, "We get call from a friend or from a family, 'Hey, somebody coming. Help him, receive him, and give him some time to live, and then get them started, find him a job.'"

The valley stop also includes a visit to Custom Almonds, a processing and packaging facility in Earlimart run by the Toor family. After coming to the valley, the Toors were able to purchase their own almond farm, eventually adding more land and then building the processing facility, which now processes more than 13 million tons of almonds a year, along with other types of nuts.

These U.S. immigrant stories should be a source of pride for Americans as well as those building lives in their new home country, Bastianich said.

"That's the strength of America," Bastianich said. "There's no country in this world that has the diversity of ethnicity that America has, and there's no country that is stronger, bigger, better than America in the world. So there must be some basis there for for that, and I wanted to share that because you know, nowhere in the world that one comes with their own culture, feel part of this bigger whole, and yet, in this small whatever in this home or in its community can celebrate their own ethnicity, whether it's in food, whether it's in religion, whether it's singing or whatever."

The "Lidia Celebrates America" series, which have included tributes to America's heartland and the rural regions that are home to thriving new immigrant communities, has received honors including a James Beard Award. Visit pbs.org/lidiacelebratesamerica for more about the series.

The program will air at 9 p.m. Tuesday on Valley PBS. Visit pbs.org/food/features/flavors-that-define-us-punjab for a preview of the local segment.

Stefani Dias can be reached at 661-395-7488. Follow her on Twitter at @realstefanidias.