If anyone from the Udaipur Municipal Corporation is reading this, I request you kind sirs and dear madams, to immediately start a motion prohibiting the stylising of any more chaat and sweet shops as JMB.
Ten days before my trip to Udaipur, my friends suggested I check out (and more importantly, bring home) the kachoris at JMB sweet shop there. So here I am, standing in the middle of Chetak Circle at noon, mapping my route to JMB. Helpfully, Google suggests ‘did you mean Jodhpur Misthan Bhandar?’ Or Jayesh Misthan Bhandar, or Jagdish Misthan Bhandar, or Jai Bharat Misthan Bhandar, or oh, Shri Jodhpur Misthan Bhandar?’ Each nicely spaced across the city.
Too hungry to care, I put my phone back inside my pocket and decide to do this the old-school way: talking to fellow human beings.
Chetak Circle, and the roads leading to it, are dotted with kiosks and carts of street food: kachoris , jalebis , dabelis , and pani puri . Dishes iconic to Mumbai — the vada pav , for instance — are as popular and well-made here. I make a pit-stop at the Poornima VadaPav cart, which is surrounded by nearly 10 people.
Behind the stall, the staff move as if in fast motion: one fries the batter, while another wraps the fritter inside the bread, and the third adds the chillies and plates it. I munch on the crunchy, spicy dish at half the speed, sucking air through my teeth. Luckily, the stall also serves a tall glass of buttermilk to wash the heat down. My wallet is only ₹15 lighter, but my stomach is quarter-way full. However, the search for the famed kachoris continues.
Passing by an entire row of stalls dedicated to egg bhurji s (scrambled eggs) and omelettes at Egg Junction, Egg Point, Egg World… I find my way to the nearest JMB: This one is Jayesh Misthan Bhandar, started in 1964.
A young man with a pleasant smile greets me at the nashta centre of the shop. This is a semi-circular protrusion from the main shop, that sells sweets. Marking me down as a tourist, he suggests, “You should try our pyaz (onion) kachori .” For only ₹20, this plate of crisp, flaky batter stuffed with onion could easily pass for a full lunch. Instead of small round kachoris , this dish is one big kachori , cut up into six pieces, much like a pizza. Tamarind chutney seeps into the the edges of the slices, and green coriander chutney sits on the top.
I sit down on the steps of the shop, and finish my lunch with a mother and her toddler son. And of course, click a billion pictures of us with oily fingers on my now-smudgy phone.
