The Pakistani Spectator

Food is important enough in India to be given frequent mention in our religious texts. A large slice of middle-class India’s income is spent on restaurants. We do not eat out as much as Thais, who are never home for supper, but eating out is always special. This was particularly so in the days when the middle-class wasn’t as well off as it is now, eating out less frequent and fast food unavailable.

Street food here is not as hygienic as street food is in Vietnam and Thailand, or Europe, but it’s just as delicious. And there is immense variety. A very good meal may be had in Bombay for Rs20. The Zodiac Grill, at the Taj, has annual degustation dinners with paired wines for Rs10,000 a head.

The variety also comes through cuisine, because India has so many different sub-cultures.

Street food is recent in Indian cities and can be dated to around 1840. This is when a group of Gujaratis began trading in Bombay’s Fort area, starting Asia’s first stock exchange a few years later. They traded mainly in cotton, and many made fortunes in the period 1861-65 when global supply was affected by the Civil War. These early globalisers worked late into the night when rates were wired in and orders wired out. By then everyone would be quite hungry and the wives would be asleep at home.

The traders were served by street stalls that invented a late-night special: pav bhaji. This is mashed vegetables (all the leftovers) cooked in a tomato gravy and served with buttered loaves. As the city flourished, the food became more sophisticated and included snacking for pleasure rather than just for nourishment. Stalls serving bhel (a puffed rice mixture) and pani-puri, the Bombay version of the north Indian gol-gappa, came up.

One of Bombay’s most recognisable places is the Irani cafe. These are run by Persians who have come recently to Bombay in the last 150 years or so. They are called Iranis; the old lot, who came after the conquest of Persia in AD 644 under Caliph Umar, are called Parsis and they speak Gujarati. Both are Zarathustrian by faith.

A century ago, Iranis could come to Bombay and get very good corner places, facing two streets, cheap. In these they would set up their cafes selling bun-maska, qeema-pav, omlettes and pastries. The corner places were cheap because Gujarati merchants would not buy commercial property that was sinh-mukhi (lion-faced, wider at the front than the rear). They preferred gau-mukhi (cow-faced with an opening narrower than its rear). But all corner properties are necessarily sinh-mukhi and so Bombay has a lot of these excellent cafes. Many have shut down and all will be gone in a decade.

Iranis brought food that was new to India. South Bombay’s Britannia restaurant is the only place we can eat berry pulao, made with a sour little fruit that is apparently still imported from Persia.

The other city that has excellent street food is Calcutta, also urbanised by the British. Jhal-mudi is the bhel of Bengal: puffed rice with onions, chillis and mustard oil, given in a paper funnel. Calcutta has a mixed culture and the nobility of Awadh moved there after Wajid Ali Shah’s kingdom was annexed in 1856.

Because of this migration, Calcutta biryani is from the Lucknow school, dry and subtle. This separates it from Hyderabadi biryani, which is sticky and has more masala. The other famous meat dish in Calcutta is tikia, a minced meat patty slow-cooked for hours on a tava and spiced with saffron.

Bengalis also love rolls, which are fried parathas rolled up and filled with meat, egg or chicken.

Bengali Hindu cuisine is possibly the best in India. It is certainly the most sophisticated. It is the only Indian cuisine that has courses, and where the seasons really show up in lunch and dinner. A Bengali meal might have a vegetable starter, then dal and dry vegetables, then fish and then a meat course. All courses are eaten with rice, not roti. Then there would be a mashed fruit and sugar syrup mix called chatni and lastly a dessert, often a sweetened curd.

Bengali Brahmins are not vegetarian. The great Bengali Ramakrishna Mission, which spreads Upanishadic knowledge has trouble when its missionaries land in places like Gujarat, where people would be horrified to learn that their guru ate fish. So the poor monk has to make do with dal and rice instead of the spread he is used to.

Because it is so elaborate, there are very few restaurants that serve Bengali food, even in Calcutta.

Running a restaurant in Indian cities is not easy because real estate is expensive, trained staff hard to come by (unless you come from a particular community, like the Shettys who run efficient places in Bombay), and the laws are asinine.

It is easier to run dhabas outside cities, though less profitable. Often the dhabas are run by retired army officers, with very little idea of business. It is touching to see them at work, the wife in the kitchen and the husband — I once met a major — running around waiting on tables, having invested their little pension on the place.

Dhabas of course serve Punjabi food and it is the cuisine most exported around India. Restaurants in all Indian cities will include ones that serve palak-paneer, dal, roti and tandoori chicken. Many of these places are run by Sikhs, a popular and enterprising community.

South India has very good and diverse cuisines, though most famous are its idli, a rice cake, and dosa, a wafer-thin crepe that is fried. Both are had with sambhar, a sort of dal made with drumsticks, and chutney made of coconut.

Gujaratis love South Indian food, because they are vegetarian. This doesn’t mean that South India food is vegetarian. In fact most of it, in Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, isn’t because the peasantry eats meat.

The interesting places in Madras are those that are called military hotels. The name comes from the fact that these places serve meat and their patrons were soldiers from castes the British called martial. Tamilian non-vegetarian food is interesting and might include eon and rabbit. The rest of the meal is the same as the vegetarians’: rice, sambhar, curd, a little vegetable and chatni and papad.

When the world talks of Indian food, they normally mean north Indian food. Cookery shows, and there are dozens of shows around the world on Indian food, are more informed and include food from the south. Most Indian restaurants in London serve north Indian food and are actually run by Bangladeshis.

Chinese and Italian food is popular in India but will not be recognisable to Chinese and Italian people. Pasta has masala, pizza topping might be tandoori chicken and the Chinese food of India is a cuisine by itself.

Between north and south lies Goa, and its cuisine is first rate, but known and available in very few cities. Goan Hindus eat sea food like mussels, fish and crab cooked in a coconut gravy.

Goa’s Catholics have their food like sausage, cafreal (chicken in a hot green sauce), sorportel (pork cooked in blood) and fish cooked in a heavy red sauce called rechad. These are eaten with pav, the great Portuguese gift to India, or sanna, a fluffy idli, or rice.

The best place to have a holiday in India is Goa. This is because it is cleaner than the rest of India, more polite, the food is excellent and the people are not moralistic. Additionally, because of their experience under Portuguese colonisation, Goans are familiar with Europeans and, unlike other Indians, do not ogle too much at half-dressed women.

By Aakar Patel

The writer is director with Hill Road Media in Bombay.