(Clockwise from above right )Two views of newly renovated Chor Bizarre; Japani Samosa; Kashmiri wazwan
Three of the four surviving arched, ruined darwazas (gates) of Mughal Delhi lie along the busy stretch leading up to the historic Broadway Hotel on Asaf Ali Road, where one of Delhi’s most iconic traditional Indian restaurants Chor Bizarre has just reopened, prompting a luxurious reworking of nostalgia.
Asaf Ali Road has been home as much to the erstwhile Delhi Stock Exchange and Delite cinema of early post-Independence years as to the bygone glories of Shahjahanabad. As I drive past Turkman darwaza, named after the tomb of a sufi saint, and step through the portals of time, it is to stand by a “chaat mobile” (a vintage car converted into a chaat dispensing station) from where old Delhi’s elusive Japani samosa is being dispensed in more salubrious (and hygienic) surroundings than it may have ever found since its invention in Lahore in the 1920s.
The Japani samosa made an appearance in Delhi’s Manohar Samosewalle in 1949, a stall at Chandni Chowk. The dish had migrated post-Partition from Lahore, where the name “Japani” likely connoted “novelty”, in a nod to trade and travel between the undivided Punjab and Japan at the time. Japani cloth, for instance, referred to machine-made cloth in the early 20th century, recall some old-timers. Post World War 1, Indian traders had started becoming the middlemen for Japanese exports to Europe. Punjab’s rich young men also travelled to Japan to broaden their education, as the fascinating Maharaja Jagjit Singh of Patiala’s travelogue in 1902 suggests.
For close to 75 years, the Japani samosa—it is said to have 60 layers of flaky phyllo pastry and has nothing Japanese about it—has been one of old Delhi’s fabled street-eats. However, few even in the city have ever eaten it, with just Manohar Samosewalle selling it.
At Chor Bizarre Delhi—it houses art deco antiques including a sword stand from Churu, early 20th century floor tiles, and a clipping of The Times of India from August 16 1947—the Japani samosa is trending as a heritage curiosity, along with other chaats and kachoris of the old city. These dishes are now accessible in an upscale restaurant environment to foodies looking for the unique, exclusive and historic. A food festival at the restaurant featured the dishes, such as the Japani samosa from Manohar Samosewalla—bought from their original vendors in the walled city who were duly credited on the festival menu in a bid to promote old Delhi’s food culture. Given the response from customers, the restaurant may continue serving these up on a more regular basis.
(Clockwise from top) Cocktails from a distilled mahua spirit produced by Six Brothers Distillery; Posh Hersh puff ; Duck stroopwaffle
Perfecting the gushtaba and taar gosht
The Japani samosa is not the only heritage recipe being revived. The Kashmiri wazwan cooked by both Muslim and Pandit wazas (cooks) is another draw at Chor Bizarre, exceptional because traditional Kashmiri cooks with long lineages are notoriously difficult to retain by any restaurant outside the state. While many attempt approximations of the wazwan classics, to get the texture and taste right is tough outside of Kashmir.
“For the seekh kebab, tabak maaz, aab gosht or the gushtaba, what the wazas do is very difficult to replicate because of their technique, which young chefs just cannot get right,” says restaurateur Rohit Khattar. After returning from studying in the US, Khattar set up Chor Bizarre at Broadway Hotel, which his mother had inherited from his maternal grandfather Tirath Ram Amla, a Kashmiri businessman. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the restaurant shut down, and has now reopened in a bigger, better avatar.
The fragrant and mild gushtaba, the last course of a wazwan served on a bed of hot Basmati rice, is made by beating the meat with wooden mallets. But this is a painstaking technique perfected only by the wazas, an inherited occupation. “We tried to get young chefs to learn but they find it tough to pick up the nuances,” explains Khattar, whose company also runs a cooking and hospitality training school that serves as a nursery for talent in his restaurants, including Indian Accent.
In Delhi, as Diwali ushers in months of feasting and partying, ‘authentic’ banquets and dishes that are lost art forms are being sought out by seekers of luxury dining experiences.
Lost Rampuri dishes such as taar gosht and kebabs are in demand too. Rampuri food is distinct from the Avadhi food of Lucknow or the Mughlai food of Delhi, but for years these nuances were lost to customers. Rampuri kebabs and gravies are different from Avadhi food in their use of whole spices and chunkier textures, as distinct from the legacy of the Avadhi nawabs with their Shia lineage traced from Nishapur (in Iran). While, the delicate, fragrant food of Lucknow bears a distinct Persian imprint, Rampuri food carries the Rohilla-Afghan nawabi heritage.
For his annual Diwali party, businessman Vikas Rishi is bringing in Rampuri cooks for a feast that Delhi diners may not have come across before. “We had visited a luxury hotel in Corbett for a festival of Hindustani classical music, and found the hotel had arranged for a Rampuri meal on one of the days made by cooks from Rampur [which is about 2 hours from the Jim Corbett National Park]. They made over 20 kinds of kebabs. Many people in Delhi claim to do Rampuri or Lucknowi food but that is fake. The dishes at my home will be made by the same cooks, since these are not available otherwise,” says Rishi.
Taar gosht, or taar qaliya as it is also called, is the most famous of Rampuri gravy dishes. It has almost disappeared from restaurant menus, and even when mentioned is a pale imitator. It is a dish that serious diners are perhaps more familiar with by reputation rather than taste.
For instance, it was once mentioned by writer Khushwant Singh, who recounted a legend that the taar or the layer of fat on top of the gravy was reused by cooks whose lineage went back a few centuries. Hence, the taar qaliya they cooked, too, was part of a very long continuum. The story is not true, because fat would disintegrate over such a long period. Nevertheless, it points to a fascinating history. And it is perhaps what the new connoisseurs seek.
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From Raab to Mahua: Lost liquids in the pot
Another hitherto disappearing dish that is now enjoying a pan-India renaissance is the Rajasthani raab. A grain-and-yoghurt soup made with barley, bajra or corn at different times of the year, the raab, till a few years ago, was confined to humbler homes, almost unknown to outsiders in a state where tourists invariably demand laal maans and such.
Now, curated menus by top chefs seem to have rediscovered the raab. At the Oberoi Bengaluru, chef Anirban Dasgupta, who has also been experimenting with Bengali and Maharastrian heritage dishes, plated up a ‘rajgira corbasi’ inspired by the barley raab, this time with popped amaranth. In Udaipur, a menu drawn up by Raffle’s executive chef Avijit Deb Sharma began with a bajre ki raab with millet foam and included other lesser known but contemporarised Rajasthani dishes like pithore and khoba roti.
And at the Leela Jaipur, the raab again led a dinner menu, along with bina paani ki roti and bejad ki roti, researched by chef Varun Parashar, amid a conversation that touched upon themes such as the role of the rabadi community of nomadic goat herders in the quality of Rajasthan’s meat dishes, and how the village of Mathania no longer produces its hot chillies!
One reason why lesser-known local dishes are making savvy comebacks is because of social media, where chefs, travellers and influencers on a veritable (re)discovery of India, so that everything from the malai paan of Lucknow to the jasmine sharbat of Ajmer is spotlighted. ‘Authenticity’ is a new luxury.
In fact, in Mumbai, at Bandra Born, which pays homage to all things Bandra, East Indian and regional, chef Gresham Fernandes is creating highly technical but delicious food rooted in his community. Here, mahua, one of India’s oldest brews made from flowers, takes centrestage. There are about a dozen cocktails made from a distilled mahua, produced by the Six Brothers distillery, which dates back to 1922.
(Clockwise from above ) Interior and exterior view of Kappa Chakka Kandhari; Ney pathiri, a fried rice bread with curry
From Malabar, with gluten-free love
At Kappa Chakka Kandhari, the celebrated restaurant by chef Regi Mathew in Chennai and Bengaluru, the Malabar parotta is conspicuous by its absence. “I went to hundreds of mothers and their homes in different parts of Kerala to research the dishes, but none of them ever served me a Malabar parotta,” quips Mathew, whose restaurant highlights the state’s home cooking.
What has been added to his menu, instead, is the ney pathiri, a fried rice bread much like the north Indian poori, from northern Kerala. This is paired with a rich mutton and potato gravy, reminiscent of the Bengali luchi-mangsho or Uttar Pradesh’s poori-kaliya. This is a combination not often associated with Kerala food and is not usually available to outsiders. Now, Mathew, who plans to take his food to New York soon, changes that.
Mathew has also introduced other lesser-known dishes such as prawn with jackfruit seeds and green mango, and fish with drumstick curry that “our mothers used to make but are now disappearing”.
At the chain Daryaganj in Delhi, where the star dish is the butter chicken with a recipe from 1947, other historic ‘lost’ recipes have made it to the menu too. These include nargisi kofte with a hard-boiled egg coated with mince, a dish that ostensibly inspired Scotch Eggs, as well as the ‘ande ka halwa’, a late-Mughal period dish, whose recipe can be found in 19th century cookbooks. These were a part of Delhi’s food tradition till the early years of Independence.
Daryaganj co-founder Amit Bagga shows me a copy of Mrs Balbir Singh’s Cookery that he has been going through—a collection of recipes very popular till the 1960s-70s with Delhi’s eligible bachelorettes, who enrolled in Mrs Balbir Singh’s cooking classes as a matter of prestige. He may be using some of these in future menus as the chain expands and goes international early next year.
Those days are past. But as ambitious restaurants seek to expand, and a new culture of connoisseurship emerges, the lost is luxe.