Out to Lunch

Far from the fashionable streets, roadside food fulfills a very real hunger.

Sumana Mukherjee
Updated: Jan 13, 2012 02:25:10 PM UTC

The bread is sliced thick and gently toasted on a metal grill over an open charcoal fire. The butter is brushed on lightly, possibly more in deference to cost than to cholesterol, melting instantly as it hits the still-warm toast. And then it’s all sprinkled with sugar. On a winter afternoon, the basic pleasures of a nursery staple multiplies several times when it is devoured on the roadside, from a shack so temporary it doesn’t even have a roof.

Far from the enduring romance of the Raj-era menus of Flurys and Mocambo on party street, far even from the much-feted mutton rolls at Kusum, Kolkata’s working class sustains itself on food that may not evoke nostalgia but can certainly satiate the tastebuds on their way to filling that uncomfortable hole in the stomach. Consider the breadman. There’s a veritable queue at his stall on Old Post Office Street every evening once the nearby High Court gives over for the day and the four pm hunger-pangs strike. Our man deftly slices a large loaf with an all-purpose knife, slides a slice on to his wire griddle, gives it a turn or two over his portable stove, adds butter and sugar and presents it with a big, shy smile, a special for us, his irregular clientele. For the everyday folks, there’s hot tea in a cup and saucer, served with banter on Didi’s latest escapade or the now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t winter.

IMG00047-20111226-1540-300x225Litti love: Raghunandan makes a mean roast

Up the road from the breadman, near the rickety “heritage” buildings that house the city’s legal profession, Raghunandan has his stall-on-wheels. By 10am everyday, the wiry gent has all his paraphernalia in place: The standard charcoal fire, the griddle, the large pan to knead the dough and mix the sattu filling, the potato mash, the watery green chutney. He came from Koderma 18 years ago to look for work in Kolkata, he tells us. Somewhere along the way, he gave up manual labour and, dredging up memories of watching his mother cook, began selling litti-chokha, the taste of home, to fellow-migrants.

At his stall, we meet Avinash Singh, in Kolkata to set up an office for his firm headquartered in Ranchi. He had spent Christmas evening onPark Street, he informs us, and had to come to BBD Bagh, “office-para”, for legal paperwork. He’d been passing by, when the unmistakable aroma of roasting litti hit his nostrils. It is late afternoon but Raghunandan is happy to stoke the fire and serve us the hot wheat balls stuffed with sattu flour, onion, ginger, garlic, green chillies and coriander, accompanied by a potato chokha and a coriander chutney.

Though the Esplanade-BBD Bagh hub makes up the central business district, office-para meals are available anywhere there are, well, offices. Irrespective of the locality and their distinctive specialties – you may hunt in vain, for instance, for Camac Street’s chillas in Dacres Lane, which makes something of a showpiece of its chops and cutlets – they have a few features in common. For one, they’re always cooked fresh and served hot off the fire. Two, because their purveyors depend on the same client-pool, illness resulting from bad quality food is unheard of. And three, flavours can be happily customised but the taste never changes.

Which, of course, is the idea, because street food, unlike gourmet fare, does not take kindly to experimentation. Its patrons know what they like and that’s why they come back for more of the same. The multiple matrixes of Kolkata’s streets offer cuisines of every ilk, from straightforward nurseryfood and migrantfare to the locally developed, so-called “Mughlai” parathas and jhalmuris. But unlike the phuchkas of Vivekananda Park or the chaats behind New Market, office-para food is no weekend indulgence. They perform a very basic fuction: That of filling the stomach. Combined with a glass of water, both bread and sattu rise to the occasion.

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.

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