India’s most loved fast food is the chaat range of quick fix snacks…. once you have the basic half-a-dozen ingredients and chutneys its easy to meet any request for a yummylicous bhel or pani puri or samosa chaat, the choice is almost endless moving from traditional to whatever one can think up to make the chaat exotic!
INDIA’S chaat repertoire is amazing and so much loved across the country now with a few variations here and there! It is our version of fast food yet I would say every bit as welcome as say the Middle-eastern mezze platter with its tidbits of finger food…of course, these finger food tidbits are part of the course of appetizers which precede a main meal, followed by dessert.
Stuff yourself some more with the grand menu cards of life and roll home in a drunken stupor to sleep off the effect of a late night dinner. We may dine finely or grossly, but this is to say when in a mood to celebrate a birthday or something at the very nth minute and you’re not sure how many will turn up…it’s a great idea to simply do a chaat layout for high tea which eliminates the idea of a late dinner for reasons of good health. Hey, that’s what is happening at street level.
Increasingly, people love it if they can come early, go early. Also consider our desi chaat list of fare as light-hearted wholesome food; indeed, superior to many of the Western-styled heavyweight food of cold countries….think breads, butters, cheese platter, soups, pastas, grills, etc We don’t live in a temperate country, why must we breakfast, lunch and dine like we’re living in Sweden or Italy or London. Instead of our tropical homeland of Goa or wherever else in India which also of course includes temperate and desert places.
LAST week for an impromptu birthday fling I just bought several chaat items and found it so easy to fix say a “bhelpuri” or “sev batata puri” or “dahi sev puri” — served up in a jiffy. You need a tamarind-jaggery/date and green coriander chutney for lending flavor and if you wish also the “pani” for “pani-puri.” The flavorful chaat “pani” has to be made in advance with green coriander/mint/chili and a good chaat masala, store the water in fridge for use later, flavor improves. Also, never forget the last squeeze of lemon as a finale touch and voila. Home-fixed chaat item numbers are tastier than the one you love to eat at any of the chaat centers down town or up town Panjim!
OF COURSE if you wish you may get some samosa/kachori/alu tikki/dahi-vada to fix samosa chaat or kachori chaat or alu tikki chaat if someone says this or this or t his chaat item to soothe their soul for love of chaat. It’s my eternal regret that although our repertoire of fast food as in desi chaat is wide and much loved, we don’t have a single chain doing them for public consumption on the lines of say MacDonalds’s or KFC or Domino’s or Pizza Hut or Starbucks, etcetera.
What are the usual chaat snacks…
Pani-puri and bhelpuri is primary of course, then think dahi vada, aloo tikki, samosa chaat, dahi papri chaat, sukha bhel, sukha papri chaat, etcetera…some innovations are aloo ki chaat, fruit chaat, ragda pattice, Pindi cholay bhatura can be very filling and I may love the cholay but never the large fried puri of refined flour called “ bhatura.” Chaat caterers may come up with bizarre chaat inventions, straying far from the traditional chaat snacks as featured in say Benaras in Uttar Pradesh, India, oldest and most sacred city of Hinduism. Want to really have fun eating chaat, go Benaras! Remember how hostess with the mostess, Nita Ambani, created a Benaras chaat street at her younger son Anant Ambani’s marriage last year in 2024 (July 24 if I remember right).
A FRIEND tells me nowadays one may have a chaat party at home for several independent caterers do just this. They bring the range of items required and do the servicing too with their help. It’s a great idea to do a social chaat do at home! I usually buy such chaat essentials as fine crunchy “sev,” “boondi,” the puff “puri” for “paani puri,” etc, from my old favorite Sawant Bros down Panjim market; then some things I get from Mishra Peda at Caranzalen who do reasonably good “papri puri” along with a “sukha bhel puri mix” — a dry savoury mix of crunchy tidbits useful for fixing the chaat range of snacks. Really good flat papri puri for for fixing “dahi papri chaat” is hard to find though.
Few sell these little round flat papri puri although the ones at Sweet Nation are the best. Since I love them so on several occasion I asked the staff here to sell me a packet of these puri, against all the 16,000 odd “boondi” marks I’ve piled up against my account here – but I get the usual, sorry Madam! They cannot do that. Go and talk to the boss if I want a whole packet of their flat papri puri! I will, I said, although I haven’t yet. They do enticing chaat numbers at Sweet Nation but it’s the most expensive chaat place in town.
That too after all the idiotic promotion they did with their “Come for Rs1” chaat and popular snacks some time ago which saw college students lining up outside the place. Promotion over, it’s now like a haunted place and even I have stopped going there except the odd weekend when the hubby demands “dahivada” or “jalebi” which I dare say is the best in town (also healthconscious with fewer fried crunchies featuring in the chaat items).
OKAY, enough chaat talk now. This is just to say it’s easy to make chaat stuff at home and it’s more yummylicious than anywhere else in town! One just has to plan for it, that’s all and keep the stuff in air-tight boxes outside or inside the fridge. A friend tells me there’s an Atithi Rasoi Ka Funda doing chaat specials on prior order, must check it out. My friend Sonia Jalan who caters for Chat Street also takes a chaat catering order and I dare say so do others.