Why choose between spicy, flavourful street food and gorgeous, plated gourmet dishes when you can have both? Indian street food needs no introduction — every place in India has its own special secrets. Chefs and high-end restaurants are waking up to the bountiful flavours and textures of Indian street food — and elevating its status. The fare from small joints jostling for space amidst the city’s maze of lanes now finds a place in fine dining menus.
A big fan of the street food inspiration is Chef Kunal Pathkar from Farzi Café, Mumbai. “Indian food has inspired the international palate for a long time, and street food offers great variety,” he says. Farzi Café has championed tapas-style street food, to combine its taste and texture with the elegance of gourmet. Your average samosa-chutney transforms into a chilli duck samosa with plum chutney, while their Bombay bhel is tweaked with liquid nitrogen for a crunchy, smoky effect and vada pav gets ‘Farzified’ with the pav hidden inside the vadas.
Their most notable tweak is the pav bhaji, with a French-Italian fusion, where the bhaji is inspired by Ratatouille-style vegetable and seasoning, and the oav is an olio focaccia — the street style and gourmet recipes create a fanciful lovechild here.
Chef Saurabh Modi of MasalaBar, Mumbai, talks about his cocktail bhel, which is essentially a prawn salad that’s made in the style of streetside bhel, with peanuts, shallots and tamarind chutney. The dish is made right at the bar in a cocktail shaker, recreating the experience of the streetside vendor whipping up fresh bhelpuri in front of your eyes. “We wanted to bring a non-vegetarian element into the traditional bhel, and yet keep it in tune with our bar,” says Chef Modi, adding that this is why it’s also served in a cocktail glass.
Gourmet restaurants across other cities, such as Teddy Boy in Delhi, have taken to a new dining culture, serving everything from kulcha tacos and chicken pani puri pops to Mexican-styled Guacamole golgappas. Masala Library counts beverages such as vodka pani puri shots in its menu, while Kolkata’s The Park Hotel dishes out its popular prawn papdi chaat to its customers.
Inspiration both waysBut this isn’t a one-way street (pun intended). It’s not just chefs at restaurants who are getting “inspired” by street food; the trend is working its way back with vendors as well. They have now taken to dishing out local specialities with a tinge of contemporary style. Throwing in a few hitherto disparate flavours, creative street food vendors are exploring exciting ingredients to dish out delectable fusion street food.
Vendors on a creative spree even indulge in chocolate log dosas and crispy ghee-roasted dosas with cheese toppings and a multitude of olives, pickles and jalapenos.
While most street food traces back to a local region, many street food joints dish out Italian and Chinese in their sev puris, or even the cold bhel. Chennai’s popular street food joint Vaishnavaa’s at Kilpauk serves crowd favourites like the Mexican dosa sandwich, murukku sandwich and mayonnaise puff.The owner says he started re-inventing and customising the menu to stand up to stiff competition from other local joints.
“Our sandwich dosas are big hits, and people line up till midnight to buy them. Most of the menu ideas came from our customers, who wished to customise dosas with lots of flavours. They became an instant hit,” he smiles.
Sweeter sideIf you see colourful sweet boxes making way for sleek mithai jars that are trending this season, don’t be surprised. Other interesting festival specialities such as rasmalai panacotta and gulkhand cupcakes are just the tip of the sugary iceberg that make a mark.
Along Mumbai’s Nariman Point, many boutique dessert joints dish out festival specialities such as gajar ka halwa stuffed into crepes, masala chai ganache and saffron mousse.
In the dessert space, fusion desserts such as boondi and gulab jamun cheesecake mithai jars are finding their way into menus. Popular fried sweets like jalebi are being reworked to cater to refined palates.
At the Masala Library in Delhi, it transforms into a jalebi caviar with pistachio cream, a big hit with sweet lovers who can’t handle the generous quantities of sugar that’s usually used in traditional jalebis. The Bombay Canteen fused two favourites — the local gulab jamun and the western doughnut — into a gulab-nut, and it is quite a hit with customers.
Chef Pathkar mentions his ras malai tres leches, which combines a mille-feuille of ras malai, topped with whipped cream and soaked in kesar milk — the three versions of milk that make up the traditional tres leches.
For Chef Dharmen Makwana at the Leela Palace Chennai, street food techniques are inspiring. The average kulfi sold on the streets is frozen hard, but in his version, the liquid nitrogen freezes it and yet gives it a mousse-like texture. “Street food flavours work great; we even made a payasam ice cream,” he adds.
(With inputs from Elizabeth Mathew)
