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People milling around carts on busy street corners for their chaat fix of pani puri and bhel; teens cutting class from college for their fill of samosas and pakoras; office-goers woofing down vada pav with a cutting chai before they catch their train; crowds at popular beaches snacking on pav bhaji and dosas.
Mumbai, the commercial and cultural capital of India, is where street food comes into its own. It takes the best street eats from different regions of India and adds its own masala to the mix. Mumbai street food is cheap, quick and oh-so tasty. It’s also the ultimate equaliser, available to everyone from your daily wage labourers to your penthouse-living super rich. So, when the Indian diaspora in Sydney craves their street-food fix, they make their way to Sydney’s Little India: Harris Park.
It’s lunch o’clock on a Sunday and we’re outside Chatkazz, a Mumbai street-food joint that’s held its own for more than a decade. You need to know three things before you go: Chatkazz doesn’t take reservations; it is vegetarian; it’s not licensed to serve alcohol. Trust us when we say that you won't be kept waiting for long despite how busy it seems; you won’t miss the meat; and there are plenty of interesting non-alcoholic drinks to try.
We join the queue outside along with a fair few other Indians. Once shown to our table, we spy posters of Indian pop culture framed on the walls as we scan the extensive menu. It’s broadly divided into North Indian and South Indian sections with helpful photos of their must-haves. If you’re daunted by the 200-odd dishes, remember that many are different versions of a staple item. For instance, in the dosa (crisp savoury crêpe) section of the menu, take your pick from a sada dosa (plain), a masala dosa (with a potato filling), a Mysore masala dosa (with a spice mix spread inside), a rava dosa (semolina), a dosa platter (three different types), or the humongous family dosa designed to feed – you guessed it – a family.
You can always ask the friendly staff for their reccos or even other Indian diners, most of whom are only too happy to offer explanations of what’s what. Our suggestion? Order a variety of dishes to share. After much deliberation, we try to place our order via the QR code on our table, but it just won’t go through. A waitstaff comes to our rescue and sorts it out for us.
The open kitchen is a flurry of activity; we admire the dexterity of a chef slicing and dicing a mountain of raw onions at the speed of light – without shedding a single tear. Service is quick and dishes come out in no particular order. Warning: every dish is big on flavour, so buckle up and enjoy the spicy ride. First up, our drinks: a fragrant masala chai (spiced tea) that’s piping hot and a thick mango lassi that’s sure to cut through the spicy food we’ve ordered. You can even get nimbu pani (Indian lemonade) and Indian soft drinks like Thums Up and Limca.
For our South-Indian fix, we order a sada dosa. It’s a crisp perfection and we dunk bits of it into the accompanying sambar (a tangy lentil and vegetable stew) and the white coconut and red tomato chutneys. It’s gone in a flash, so we move onto the idli vada sambar that allows you to taste one fluffy white steamed idli and one golden deep fried medu vada. Don’t let the doughnut-like appearance of the medu vada fool you; it’s savoury. Believe it or not, idlis are made from the same fermented rice and lentil batter as dosas. The only difference? Dosas are fried on a hot cast iron griddle; idlis are steamed.
The hits keep coming with the must-try chole bhature from North India. It’s a chickpea curry that comes with two puffed-up puris (deep-fried bread made from wheat flour) that deflate as soon as you take that first bite. It’s finger-licking good and, like most dishes here, it’s accompanied by pickle and raw onions.
For chaat, we first polish off a plate of papdi chaat, which is crisp crackers topped with boiled potato, black chickpeas, sev, yoghurt and a sweet-tangy date-and-tamarind chutney. Next up is the pani puri, the only dish that’s a letdown – and we can see why. In Mumbai, the roadside pani puriwalla prepares each puri individually right before you pop it into your gob. He dents the small round puri and fills it with a mix of ragda (white peas), sweet and spicy chutneys and a minty, black salt-laced water which is a flavour bomb explosion in your mouth. At Chatkazz, it’s a make-your-own version and the ingredients don’t seem quite right.
Our table to the left of us is digging into their bowls of hakka noodles and Schezwan fried rice. Yes, it’s what Mumbai locals call ‘Bombay Chinese’ – a fusion of Chinese-style dishes with decidedly Indian ingredients. The table to the right is eating pav bhaji, a medley of veggies that’s mashed up and served with pav (fluffy white bread rolls) and served with a dollop of melting butter that makes it even more mouth-watering. If only…. But our tummies are groaning in protest and we’ve ordered a dessert to share.
Shrikhand, made from strained yoghurt that’s laced with cardamom and saffron and studded with nuts, is the creamy, dreamy dessert we want. Tart and sweet at the same time, it’s so rich that all we need is a spoonful to end our meal on a perfect note.
After such a heavy meal, a walk around Little India to admire the saris and sniff out the spices is called for. Not quite sure how, but we find our feet taking us to the Chatkazz Indian sweet shop just around the corner!
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