Hungry In Hogtown

Chai ho! The pleasures and perils of dining in India, part II

Yes, after slightly more than two months in India, I finally took the plunge and ate full on street food.  I'm talking stall on the street, a stainless steel urn of water and a communal cup, a pot with watery chutney, and dodgy looking customers (including one angry looking guy with a large scar beneath one eye that gives him permanent stank eye).  The kitchen for this streetside cuisine was in an alley behind the stall where, just around a corner and out of sight, a couple of men fry snacks morning, noon, and night.

But what snacks.
 
I'm in love with Mumbai's classic streetfood: vada pav.  Add some chillies and spice to boiled and mashed potatoes (already a pretty good start, eh?), form it into patties, then dust the patties in spiced chick pea flour before frying them until golden, brown, and delicious.  Take said delectable fritter and sandwich it in a small, soft bun slathered in a loose, garlicky, green or red chutney.  Wrap in newspaper and serve to students, street urchins and foolish tourists.

Swoon!

Vada pav (usually pronounced "wada pow" here) is Mumbai's answer to the street dog with a vegetarian twist.  The street version costs a hefty Rs. 6, or just 13 US cents, so I splurged on two.  There are versions that are a lot less "street," of course.  For Rs. 9, you can get the fast food version at Jumbo King, Mumbai's answer to McDonald's (well, aside from all the damn McDonald's), and for a whopping Rs. 60, there's one of Mumbai's best vegetarian restaurants, Swati Snacks, which serves a safe, top notch sandwich slathered in red chutney and served with a side of fiery masala.

 

The New York Times even published an article full of largely misguided information about vada pav and Mumbai street food:
 
Having tried the Times recommended Jumbo King, I heartily endorse the sentiments of the driver who tried to dissuade me from eating there: "Jumbo King is not vada pav, it's vada 'bun.'"  All of which is to say that Jumbo King serves their vada pav on a hamburger bun and otherwise sullies the great, greasy name of the vada pav in much the same way that McDonald's insults the good name of the burger.

Anyways, after standing around for about ten minutes waiting for one of the kitchen hands to replenish his supply of vadas, the vadawallah began to mechanically slice buns and slather generous spoonful of garlic chutney -- a fantastically flavourful thin green soup of water, cilantro, and garlic -- onto each one before adding piping hot fritters.  It was soooo worth the wait.  The bun is, for lack of a better term, soft and squooshy, and the vada is a little crisp on the outside but creamy and spicy inside.  The chutney adds volumes of flavour and, let's be honest here, some necessary moisture to the dish.  If I weren't trying to maintain my Bowflex body, I'd happily eat vada pav for pretty much every meal. 

Within minutes, the vendor was cleaned out of vadas, leaving a small crowd to wait for the next batch of piping hot fritters.  In the meantime, I escaped in my getaway vehicle with three newspaper-wrapped vada pavs for me and my wheelman.

You've probably already figured out that the pav (ie. bun) and vada (ie. fritter) aren't likely vectors for foodborne illness, which leads to me believe that vadawallahs include garlic chutney as a way to make sure that this meal, like all others in Mumbai, is an intestinal roll of the dice.  Unlike North American bottled chutneys, Indian chutneys are served fresh, so they're made with far less, if any, sugar and far more water, and water is always a risky proposition.
 
So what the hell was I doing eating that watery chutney after my previous experiences with chutney?  Trusting my driver, of course.  He's a local who took me to his favourite vadawallah, and he assured me that the food is "hygienic."  "Hygienic" is the word Indians use to describe safe, sanitary restaurants.  "Loose motions" is the term they use to describe the output of eating at unsanitary restaurants.

Luckily, my driver knew what he was talking about.

Chai ho! The pleasures and perils of dining in India

It's fair to say that one of my primary motivations for accepting a four month work assignment in Mumbai was the prospect of three square a day in a country with an impeccable culinary heritage.

I dreamed of creamy gravies, tender and juicy tandoor-roasted flesh, and vegetarian delicacies.  I fantasized about dishes I didn't even know, dreamed up delicacies that I was sure to discover with a little digging and a taste for adventure.  I fancied returning to Canada with the same sort of fluency with regional Indian food that repeated trips to the boot have given me with the food of Italy.  My main fears were of returning to Toronto bloated by butter chicken and chick peas, or of missing out on an unforgettable Indian treat.

I was aware of the likelihood of foodborne illness -- everyone knows the risks of eating in a developing country -- but I figured that with a little common sense and caution I could avoid a serious bout of food poisoning and instead enjoy a gluttonous sojourn on the sub-continent.  Besides, I figured my constitution had been steeled by a lifetime of epicurean indulgence, both at home and abroad.

Ten days into my trip, heaving into the toilet and praying for the sweet release of death, I came to see things a little differently.

I'd been warned, of course.  The advice seems best suited to someone buying a mogwai, not a glutton on the prowl: "Never drink the water" is the most common refrain along with "Never eat the street food," but I was also fed a few other nuggets like, "And don't ever, under any circumstances, eat the chutney."

So I ate the chutney.

And, just like that poor mogwai fed after midnight, horrible things happened to me.

I was roused from my slumber at 5 in the morning by burps.  Delicious, chicken bharta flavoured burps, to be honest, but burps nonetheless.  During my phone call with my wife Rachel a couple of hours later, I began to feel slight discomfort.  By the time I was showering fifteen minutes later, I was doubled over in pain.

I told my colleague, the disgustingly healthy Charles, to go to the office without me.  The evening before, after I spooned a few drops of green chutney onto my papadum, Charles reiterated his strict personal no chutney policy then arched his eyebrows in the universal gesture for, "hey, it's your funeral."  My current state justified his caution.

And so I spent one of the most miserable days of my life holed up in my hotel room, curtains drawn to shield my eyes from the stabbing pain of bright light.  A doctor paid me a house call and diagnosed the obvious, food poisoning, then prescribed me a small dispensary's worth of antibiotics, anti-nauseants, and rehydration salts.

My new work colleagues in Mumbai started making prescriptions of their own, however.  Every culture touts the restorative quality of certain foods, and India's no different.  While Canadians sip flat ginger ale and chicken soup, and Italians mangiare in bianco (literally, "to eat in white"), Indians champion coconut water and curd rice.

Within hours of falling ill, a hotel employee was in my room with three coconuts sent to me by a concerned co-worker.  He cut a hole in one of them and poured its water into a glass.  I took a few tentative sips.  Coconut water looks murky and tastes like slightly sweet, stale water, but, as champions of the coconut are eager to point out, coconut water is nature's Gatorade; it's loaded with electrolytes and is less acidic and contains less sugar than common sports drinks.  Coconut water has reportedly even been used as an intravenous hydration fluid.  If only Mother Nature had the common sense to market her creation in Glacier Freeze and Tropical Intenso flavours, she could make a fortune.

I didn't develop much of a taste for coconut water, but two days of chicken broth later I was ready for solid food.  The spice and heat of many Indian dishes don't lend themselves to the kind of baby steps my digestive system and I were ready to take, so I started slow, with the dish my co-workers recommended.

Curd rice is a south-Indian specialty, a sort of sub-continental risotto.  At its most basic, it's just the room temperature leftover rice on a dinner plate or, more authentically, on a banana leaf, mixed with a few spoonfuls of unsweetened yogurt.  Millions of Indians finish their meal with a heap of curd rice to calm stomachs and mouths inflamed by spice.

When you're fragile like I was, curd rice isn't the end of a great meal, it's the appetizer, entree, and dessert.  After sampling more than my fair share of examples, I can say that not all curd rices are created equal.

Copper Chimney, a Mumbai dining institution, serves my favourite curd rice.  They mix toasted black mustard seeds, fresh raw cucumber and peppers, and chopped cilantro into creamy, cool curd rice, elevating a bland staple into a refreshing conclusion to a meal.  They even garnish it with a dried chili.  Oh, the irony!

I've now fully recovered from that bout of food poisoning, and I'm hoping that my subsequent encounters with curd rice are of a more traditional nature, as the conclusion to a spice-laden south-Indian meal.  In the meantime, I'm sampling every last Indian specialty I can find -- and hoping to blog about it a little more consistently.  I'm even trying to be a little more cautious about my food choices.

But I'm still eating the chutney.