FOOD CULTURALIST
This spicy-sweet-crunchy snack is the one time it’s OK to dribble in public, says
Our food culturalist Arva Ahmed decides to stick her neck out and tell us her favourite places to try India’s iconic and ubiquitous street food - pani puri.
There are few adult experiences that perpetuate how we eat, or more precisely, how we are fed as Indian babies. Each bite pushed towards us one at time, inflating our mouths to that breaking point where the laws of physics dictate that you can either hold the bite in, or you can chew, but never both. Or at least not without a leaky dribble down your chin.
Pani puri is one of those few experiences that continues to broker an intimate bond between the person feeding and the one fed – except that we’re all grown up, and yet we’re standing in public with leaky overstuffed mouths.
If you are not familiar with pani puri, (literally, water-bread) here is the Cliff Notes version: Chaat is (mostly vegetarian) Indian street food; it is often served from a thela (th-e-la) or a cart, though the closest we get to thelas in the UAE are roadside chaat windows. Dubai’s Karama, Meena Bazaar and Ghusais neighbourhoods are the weekend hubs for popping puris under Dh10. Pani puri is one of the most popular and messy forms of chaat, and involves stuffing a hollow shell of deep-fried dough with sweet brown chutney, green chilli-tamarind water and often potatoes or moong (mung beans). Almost every north Indian has a utopian view of his/her own chaatwalla, though no one can pinpoint where chaat originated (except the people of Uttar Pradesh who have secret knowledge that it was really them). Indians are so passionate about chaat that many would extensively annotate this Cliff Notes version, while most would discard and rewrite it altogether.
I stood outside Chaat Bazaar in Karama last weekend, one of many stops on a friend’s meticulously curated pani puri tour. Varshik and I obediently joined the queue, eagerly anticipating our rapid-fire round of six crispy, spherical wafers, each wobbly with the sweetspicy liquid that threatens to spill if you faff around with your phone.
At the risk of sparking a heated controversy within the local Indian community, I will offer my personal favourites from Varshik’s pani puri tour. Rangoli’s pani puri hits top marks with a shatteringly crisp semolina puri that unlocks the floodgates to a distinctive yet cohesive sequence of flavours: sweet dates, sour tamarind, tangy raw mango powder and then a fiery cleansing trail of sulphurous black salt and green chillies. Along with Urban Tadka and Chaat Bazaar in Karama, they also give you the option of replacing the moong beans with warm curried chickpeas (ragda) for a more Mumbai-style pani puri.
Chaat Bazaar gets bonus points for fully embracing the different pani puri varietals from across India, including moong and boondi, chopped potatoes, ragda and some inconceivable innovations. The thought of puris stuffed with pomegranate seeds, raw mangoes or paneer admittedly piqued my curiosity, but self-preservation quickly kicked in and I assure you, fellow Indians, that I did not venture into this rather blasphemous territory.
Bombay Chowpatty stocks wholewheat flour (rather than semolina) puris that recall the crunchy, brittle quality of a pile of Lays potato chips. The spicy water at Mithaas has a unique touch that I desperately tried to dissect, but the pani puri walla smiled back at my questioning gaze with pursed lips. Elco’s mediocre pani puris are redeemed with an excellent finishing “dry puri”, that final liquid-free puri topped with crumbly sev and lip-smacking chaat masala.
There were others whose names I have tried to erase from my mind. These were places that did not give you the option of standing at a counter but rather, relegated you to a table for a rather bland DIY experience. Worse, these were places that popped open a sterile plastic packet of six puris and served them with a bowl of cold diced potatoes. No amount of yoga and deep breathing can help you heal after a round of frigid potatoes in chewy puris.
As the third puri emerged onto my steel saucer at Chaat Bazaar, I couldn’t help but wonder what it must be like to work behind that window. You, the “pani puri walla’’, observe the contorted expressions of men and women, their cheeks full with a fat globe of fried dough that cannot be delicately crunched in two bites.
You, the pani puri walla, are privy to the ratio of fiery green water to sweet brown chutney for every customer approaching your window. You will understandably judge the rare breed of Indians who ask for meetha, or sweet.
You, the pani puri walla also hold the irrational conviction that you can open up right next to another chaat counter and people will come, because obviously your pani puri is better.
My recent conversation with Sham, a pani puri walla in Meena Bazaar, centered on his desire to move back to India soon. I nearly dropped my puri when he confided his plan to open his own chaat business in Indore – does India really need another pani puri walla? But Sham has a secret strategy that none of the other thelawallas seem to have, that the key to success is to market your brand into something hyped, something that customers would travel from afar to taste. Evidently, some of Dubai’s magic dust has rubbed off on him too.
I stood waiting for our six crispy wafers, each wobbly with the sweet-spicy liquid that threatens to spill if you faff around