The Gray Lady discovers chaat. Next, they’ll be telling their readers about this great new thing called roti :) But then the piece goes all sensual on you:
The contrasts are, as one fan said, “a steeplechase for your mouth,” with different sensations galloping by faster than you can track them… Chaats can be made with almost anything crispy: … fresh ginger, mung bean sprouts and spice-dusted toasted lentils. Chaat masala usually includes amchoor, a tangy powder made from green mangoes, mint, cumin and pomegranate, but it must always include kala namak, a black salt with a pleasant whiff of sulfur… “In India a guy might have a Mercedes and live in a house on a hill, but he still puts on his slippers and goes to eat chaat…”A fine tribute to pani puri… by Ganghadar Gopal Gadgil… “In that state of beatitude the Maharashtrians stop being surly, the Marwaris look at the millions of stars without being reminded of their own millions, the Sindhis admire the horizon without any intention of selling it, the Gujaratis speculate on the moon instead of the scrips they should have sold, the North Indians dream of things other than Hindi as the official language of the United Nations, and even the Parsi ladies stop nagging their husbands.”
Be still my gurgling stomach. And, more importantly, the story tells you where to get your fix, though Dimple’s been open for years:
… two popular, top-quality chaat specialists have opened in Midtown Manhattan: Dimple Fast Food and Sukhadia’s Sweets. Manhattan has lately been seized by a craze for Indian snacks, with upscale new places like Spice Market, Bombay Talkie, Von Singh’s, Devi, Lassi and Babu all claiming Indian street food as an inspiration…… Chowpatty Foods [of Iselin, NJ]… has just imported a chaat cart from India in the red-and-white color scheme of the Chowpatty chaat wallahs… a traditional chaat wallah sits surrounded by his mounds of dry ingredients… and his own mix of jal-jeera, the “firewater” that is used to fill the habit-forming pani puri.
