For 150 years almost, Jallaluddin’s family has been cooking kheer at Lal Quan in Shahjahanabad using the exact same recipe. Full fat milk is slow-cooked on a charcoal fire for almost eight hours, with rice. The result is a thick, creamy pudding, full of smoky aromas, a rich golden colour. This is kheer whose fame has spread far and wide; the shop — Bade Mian’s, as it is popularly called — is an urban legend. Yet, while all of us may have dined on its reputation, far fewer have actually sampled the kheer . It is, after all, not easy for an average South Dilliwalla, and others, to brave Chawri Bazaar, get past the hustle-bustle, dodge the onslaught of rickshaws, pedestrians walking into you, thelas carrying bulky sacks and more…
In distant Saket, at the other end of the city, where the crowds may be just as energetic but the scenario drastically different, a new modern Indian restaurant is gradually gathering steam. Desi Roots is quirky, colourful. It puts galauti kebab pate on the menu, to be delicately scooped off with bits of ulte tawe ka parantha -chips. There are sinkable couches, a bar and memorabilia that takes you back to an earlier India. But what is most striking is its dessert special: Jalalludin ki kheer . Presented in a fashionable jar, this is Bade Miyan stuff: charcoal flavour, the same thickened sweetness. The restaurant actually buys the kheer everyday from the Lal Quan shop, plates it differently, and serves up to its young customers.
All over India, traditional street food — chaat, vada pao, bhel puri, samose, mithai, farsaan , and indeed kheer — is making a huge new transition. From single-dish stalls and shops that traded both in bold flavours and reputations built over hundreds of years, the snacks and sweets are now getting “café-ised”. Bade Miyan’s kheer being retailed out of a chic south Delhi establishment may be an extreme example, but it is true that you no longer have to brave the lanes and by-lanes of Agra and Delhi, Mathura and Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Pune to get a bite of your favourite street flavours.
Cafes, pubs and chains of restaurants such as Monkey Bar, Soda Bottle Openerwalla, Farzi Café and more have put the much-loved street eats in jazzed-up formats for their urban, young and aspirational consumers, so that whether you are in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai or Bangalore has now become irrelevant to the process of accessing and enjoying the intrinsic flavours of the bazaars of different towns.
This month, when Soda Bottle Openerwalla opens up its third outpost in the country — after its overwhelming success in Delhi — Bangalore fooderati will have a chance to dine on some tweaked nostalgia. It’s not just the Irani café staples that are on the menu, brun maska and berry pulao notwithstanding. But also quintessential Bombay creations: Baida Roti , Tardeo grilled sandwiches, Bhendi Bazaar Seekh Parantha , Royal Willingdon Sports Club creation Eggs Kejriwal and more. You don’t have to catch a flight to sample these.
The flip side is what all street food fans stop to ask: do these replications taste the same? There is no simple answer. Part of the romance of eating the common man’s food is also the common man’s setting. When you have worked hard for a meal — shopped relentlessly in Chandni Chowk, braved the Mumbai locals and more, a hot or spicy offering, reasonably priced, will seem better than a gourmet meal in a fancy restaurant, where expectations are that much higher.
But there is also a question of nuances. Chaat, for instance, as it has evolved all over U.P. (and then spread to other parts of the country), uses the same basic ingredients but cooked with slightly different spices and variations as you traverse from region to region. Even in cities as close as Delhi and Agra, both capitals of the Mughal empire (which is when chaat developed), an aloo tikki is not the same.
In Shahjahanabad, the “authentic” tikki is stuffed with a mash of chana dal , pan-fried, then sliced into two and served as such with the fresh coriander green chutney and its counterpart, the tangy saunth or tamarind sauce. In Agra, conversely, the tikki goes under the name of “ bhalla ”; the patty remains un-stuffed and is smashed up and served with a lashing of yoghurt and other sauces. The chaat masala used in both these cities is also quite distinct.
It is such finer nuances that tend to get lost when more homogenised forms of food retail take over. But the poshing up of street food also needs to be looked at from the prism of Indian chefs finding a more self confident “ desi ” vocabulary to express themselves and Indian consumers growing more comfortable in their skins to demand familiar flavours with a touch (or more) of inventiveness.
As a phenomenon, it is quite akin to sushi or rice buns or indeed burgers and crepes redefining themselves globally. People want the ease of dining on nostalgia, but also quirkiness and experimentation to elevate their favourite dishes.
An Indian Accent experimenting with khandvi -ravioli or puchkas with multiple flavours of water, or Farzi Café serving up smashed bhel with cold liquid nitrogen or even a Gaggan Anand in Bangkok serving up his famous “Yoghurt” (a sphere that reminds you of yoghurt in a papri-chaat ) are all efforts to appease this sensibility towards aspirational-yet-familiar. Whether some of these handiworks work, whether they are better than the “originals” may be debatable. It is perhaps also a question of your own sensibilities as a diner.
It may be easy to dismiss modern restaurants experimenting with chaat and street eats. After all, it is a form of reverse snobbery to point out that exact hole-in-the-wall shop that serves the best titbit. But in the hand of competent chefs, much of this modern retail manages to retain the essence of its origins. At the fashionable Pali Bhavan in Mumbai, I had galauti kebab almost as good as in Lucknow. That urban legend Tundey Kebabi — the one-armed cook — does not make them as well, in my humble opinion, having grown up in that city and now seen the proliferation of the kebab empire.
Similarly, I like the version of the vada pav that Monkey Bar in Delhi serves up with its square laadi pav and ghaati masala , as also SodaBottleOpenerWalla’s Berry Pulao, though it may be different from Britannia’s. And when I took a bite of the kulle , a now-disappearing chaat from old Delhi, at Desi Roots, it was exactly how my family would do them — ginger slivers, small distinctive chickpeas in place, inside the fruit cups. There is only one chaatwalla in Chandni Chowk who still dishes these out. But dare I say, Desi Roots offers much better.
Sometimes, traditional places are not the most “authentic” — steadily watering down their wares, tweaking flavours in response to perceived changes in palates and demand. Besides which, at the end of the day, all street food is a matter of innovation. If restaurants attempt the same, why should we necessarily begrudge them?
