Good morning with breakfast on the roadside
Rahul Verma
A small corner in a busy Kolkata street always filled me with joy when I visited the city. Every morning, I found a horde of people standing there, most of them in shorts and sneakers, indicating that they had been out for their morning walks. What gladdened my heart was their activity after the walk: they were all there to gorge on crisp kachoris and aloo ki sabzi. A hole-in-the-wall shop had baskets filled with stuffed kachoris and pots of potato curry. And the health-conscious walkers had their fried fare, along with gulps of fresh air, right there on the street.
Having breakfast on the roadside has its own charm. In many parts of the world, especially in Asia, people seldom cook at home, and breakfasts are eaten in little kiosks or picked up from shacks on the streets. And while in India the morning nashta usually means home-cooked food, there is a rich tradition of street-side breakfasts, too.
Take, for instance, the hearty fare of doodh-jalebi — juicy jalebis dunked in a glass of hot milk — that is a delicious part of winter morning breakfast fare. In select sweet shops across the North, you will always find a crowd of people waiting eagerly for their tall glasses of doodh-jalebi. One of the most popular shops in Delhi is Makhan Lal Tika Ram in Kashmere Gate. Long before you spot the arrays of kadahis, carrying thickened milk of varying consistencies, your twitching nose will tell you that you’ve reached the right spot — guided by the characteristic aroma of boiling milk.
What makes doodh-jalebi so special is the fact that it is something that you don’t usually get at home. My first taste of it was at a dairy in Meerut when I was a student. The milkman placed a plump jalebi in a glass, covered it with thickened, unsweetened milk, and then topped it with a wedge of fresh malai. It was nirvana!
Delhi, along with other parts of the North, has a tradition of offering chai-parantha to early risers on the roadsides, especially on cold winter mornings. Bedmi poori is another roadside speciality. Bedmis, as you know, are stuffed pooris. They come with different kinds of accompaniments. Somewhere you are offered a mildly tempered pumpkin sabzi or a light potato curry; somewhere else you may be lucky to get chholey with tiny pakoris in them. And there is always some reddish tamarind chutney on the side, flavoured with fenugreek seeds.
There are different kinds of vegetarian morning dishes that capture my heart. I have spent many happy mornings at Ram Swarup Halwai’s shop in Old Delhi’s Bazaar Sitaram, fully focused on their bedmi aloo. The potato curry there is spicy and tart, and comes adorned with a slit green chilli. But my all-time favourite is their nagori halwa, small fried flour discs topped with the most delicious halwa. You can break one open — as in a golgappa — and fill it with the halwa, and then pop it into your mouth. Nirvana 2.0!
The most appealing part of street-side breakfasts is that there is so much choice. You can line up for a hearty bowl of paya — soup of trotters — or zubaan (tongue). I have elbowed my way up through a jostling crowd for nihari, which is a meal of slow-cooked shanks that keeps us going for the rest of the day. In parts of Jama Masjid or Jamia Nagar, Delhi, you will find deghs full of aromatic dishes to be had in the mornings.
When I lived in central Delhi, some of my most pleasant breakfast moments were at a small kiosk near Jantar Mantar, which sold hot-off-the-steamer idlis, and crisp vadas, served with sambar-and-coconut chutneys. I ate some poha from a cart in East Delhi recently, and couldn’t have enough of it. The poha — chiwda or flattened rice — had been cooked with light masalas, and then layered with chopped onions, tomatoes and coriander leaves. It was mixed with lime juice, and then topped with crispy sev and fried peanuts.
Recent and age-old migrants have added to the breakfast cauldron. One of the most invigorating spots for a roadside breakfast is Kolkata’s Tiretti Bazaar, where you get the most delicious Chinese food. The street was named after a Venetian called Edward Tiretta, who, incidentally, was a friend of the legendary Italian lover Casanova. Now, of course, the street is haunted by lovers of Chinese breakfast fare. You get delectable pork dimsums there, apart from soft fish ball soups and stuffed and steamed buns. You will find foodies huddled there at the crack of dawn, digging into meatballs and sausages, or spooning out congee from a bowl.
Our ever-expanding street-side breakfast fare never fails to cheer me up. And one of the most beautiful sights to my mind will always be Kolkata’s busy kachori-aloo street corner at noon. A huge pile of upturned donas tells me that quite a few walkers have had a very happy morning, indeed.
