No more humble fare, the rich variety of street food is wooing ever more patrons

)ne is either a street food fan, or one is not. The fan looks at piping hot batata vada that’s strained out of dark-coloured oil, anticipates the pleasure of biting into its unique green masala mix, watches the happy union of spicy and sweet chutneys lathered on the pav, and hands out a tenner to the faceless boy dishing out the stuff. The non-fan looks at the oil that’s been re-heated a dozen times, the grubby nails on the fingers that dunk the vada into the oil, the smudged newspaper that the pavs came wrapped in, the indeterminate source of water used for the chutneys, and wonders how the stomach can tolerate what the mind finds distasteful. You don’t need to be a number-cruncher to know that, in India, the fans vastly outnumber the non-fans. What’s street food without a bit of the street in it, they ask in one voice, and don’t bother waiting for an answer. Batata vada without a few micro-milligrams of Mumbai’s road dust, or Calcutta’s famous phuchkas minus the excitement of guessing the water source, or Delhi’s mouth-watering paranthas without auto fumes, they say, is merely food; not street food. Street food fans not only eat off the streets, they unendingly pine for such food—or send drivers to cart it home like filmmaker Kiran Rao admits to doing—plan events around it, build a few minutes of street food into busy schedules, and wonder why the rest of the world is not a convert, yet. Some enthusiasts egg on vendors to try new combinations, and enrich the street food repertoire. Like the twentysomething Sachin Saraf who chats up his favourite vada-pav stall owner in Mumbai’s Dadar about turning this 45-year-old street staple into another avatar altogether. They slice the steaming vada into two halves, spread the dual chutney combo on the upturned sides, sprinkle a mix of onion-tomato-green chilli-crushed coriander leaves, and top it up with ‘nylon’ sev—all borrowed from the bhelpuri-wala in the next stall. For want of another name, the concoction is christened masala vada. It’s anybody’s guess if the experiment will become part of the staple street menu, but that’s besides the point. Masala vada is fusion food, innovated on the street. Read the rest <here>