Happy stomachs

There’s a popular Punjabi idiom: Tthid naa payayieen rotian te sabay gallan khotiyaan… (if there’s no food in the stomach, everything looks fake). Somehow in Amritsar nothing ever looks fake; there’s always something in the stomach here!

Amritsar is a city where food is passion. Who would know it better than local boy, Michelin-star restaurant chef Vikas Khanna. “If you ask anyone in Amritsar, ‘Kithon aa rahe ho… (where are you coming from?)’ chances are the person will say ‘Main roti kha ke aa rehan haan… (I’ve just had my meal and come)’. For us, Ambarsaris, food reigns supreme,” he says in a matter of fact way as he leads our food trail. Later, amiable Balraj Kang, district tourist officer, gives us his take on his city. “Adha Amritsar khaan vich mast rehnda hai, adha pakaan vich (half the city is busy in eating, the other half in cooking).”

In a city like that you can’t stay away from food for too long. Let’s get on to the tastes we savoured at spots that were the chef’s personal picks. Most were established names, some dating back almost 90 years. Recipes from some of these eateries feature in his latest book Amritsar: Flavour of the Golden City.

Sweet somethings
Our first stop was at Kanha Sweets, Lawrence Road, for an appetising breakfast consisting of peethi-poori, chhole, aloo launji, gur kara and lassi. The pooris were the piece de resistance. Mini footballs these, their size made most of us feel we wouldn’t go beyond one. But one bite and we couldn’t stop at one. Crisp and flavourful, these looked deceptively oil-free! Of the accompaniments, the aloo launji was the tangy surprise. The sweetness of sugar had been blended delightfully with the sourness of tamarind to create this wonderful potato curry worthy of repeats.

The chef had warned us to keep space for his favourite flat gulab jamun available next door at Sharma Sweet House. We arrived at the hole in the wall to be met by Sharmaji, who was busy stirring milk in his gigantic kadhai. The chef presented him with his new book, showering praises on his fare. Cameras buzzed and questions flew, but Sharmaji remained unmoved by all the attention; his focus was purely on the milk. To which chef Khanna said, “This is passion! At this moment, the man does not care who we are. His only concern is the milk which needs his top priority. A newbie chef would have rushed for a photo-op with me, but not him. He is totally involved. And that’s the first lesson for success in any profession.”

Post the morning food session, we proceeded for a heritage walk. Having burnt a few calories and sweated suitably under a blazing noon sun, we were ready for another tryst with taste. It was time for lassi at Ahuja Milk Bhandar, Dhab Khatikan, one of the most popular places in town. Looking at the size of the glass, like most others in the group, I asked for the quantity to be reduced to one-third. No sooner had we gulped it down than we were asking for refills. It was the best I had ever had. The kesar lassi gets my top vote.

This is one place our group missed visiting. But it should definitely be on the list of anyone coming into Amritsar. Maqbool Road’s kulcha-wala Sardarji is a legend and his stuffed kulcha is truly “all-India fames”, as his board once said before it was corrected to “famous”! Now there is no board, I hear. He doesn’t need one. The Sardarji consistently gets his kulcha right and is known to shut shop, a true-blue roadside eatery, as soon as his kneaded flour gets over, which could be as soon as 3 pm.

Taste test
The test of a perfect kulcha lies in its crackle: once it’s out of the tandoor and on to your plate (glazed with a tempting dollop of butter) all you need to do is hold it in your hand and lightly crush it. If it gives a crackling sound, you’ve got an ace, if not, another address needs to be tried. In flavour, it should be flaky, crisp and moist. Apart from the dough mix and the low-fire tandoor that gives it its distinct flavour, it’s also the gheou (ghee) that does the trick. Nothing succeeds like ghee and it’s not for nothing they say in these parts of the country: Sau daaroo tey ek gheou (despite a hundred medicines, nothing can match the value of desi ghee!)

Our evening raid began on a snacky note with papdi-chat, aloo-tikki, bhel etc. The place was the popular Brijwasi Chat on Cooper Road. I found the stuff here below par, the aloo tikki being the only redeeming item. Soon it was time for some kukad-shukad (chicken), meat-machhi (fish). Though locals have a lot of personal favourites for tandoori chicken, keema naan and Amritsari fish, neighbours Beera Chicken House and Makhan Fish are popular spots.

We had eaten, actually seen, enough fare for a day. By the time we reached Rana’s fruit cream stall on Lohgarh Road, it was around 10 pm and we were quite satiated. The genial Balraj Singh insisted on us trying out this “different stuff”. How different could good ol’ fruit cream be? Oh! It surely was. Another one-of-its-kind of Amritsar. It was not the fruit cream I had known. It was, as Kang said, “different”. And delicious! A nutty fruit cream, it was delicately sweet, lightly creamy and had a crunch in every bite. It had a bit of fruit but no banana and all glow-signs made it a point to highlight that.  

There’s a sophistication in the food of Amritsar, considered the food capital of Punjab. The city knows how to do it right, all the time. A few rupees in the pocket and you can eat like a queen in a city where food is king.