Roadside!!!

I have met very few people who don’t like road side food. But otherwise, 95% of the people I know love it.

Some of them I can think of right now:

Churmuri: with loads of carrots, cucumber, and these days mango pieces, murmura (mandakki or kadlepuri). And now we have so many options with yellow moong (heserbele), tomato puri, nippat (I don’t know what else its called)

JoLaa: the corn which is either boiled or roased on the coal, with some lemon or spicy chutney and many different flavours

Pani puri thelas: The big round puris with aaloo and spicy paani (sweet too) and the final puri where they add chat masala, make it spicy and top it with some lemon.

Masala corn: This is the American corn, which is mixed with different providing different flavours, pepper lemon, chat masala, salt. (it seems American corn has more calories than Indian corn)

The everpresent Chat gaadi: Masala puri, bhel puri, dahi puri, samosa chat, paav bhaji, dabeli, kachori chat… basically spicy stuff which just gives life to the tongue.

Lemon soda: Earlier, we used to have Goli Sodas, in the green bottle, where we would have soda and the shopkeeper would add lemon and salt and give it to us. Now it’s changed, and we have different flavors again – Salt, sweet and salt, jaljeera, ginger and what not

Dosa Camps: How much ever dosas you eat at home, there is nothing to beat the benne masale dose (butter Masala dosa)

Bajjis and Pakodas: Mirchi (mensinkaayi) bajji, Banana(baalekaayi) Bajji, capsicum bajji, onion pakoda, aaloo bonda, ambode (I don’t know what the English counterpart for this is)

Tender coconut: Paper Ganji, where after you are done drinking the water, we can just scrape the thin coconut film. Just sweet coconut water.

Sugarcane juice: Before CaneOLa s came on to our roads, we had those manual machines where the guy would put in the sugarcanes into the crushing machine and rotate the lever manually. Well they old or new, it tastes wonderful

Bakery: Aallo buns, khara buns (spicy), veg puffs and sometimes the hot tea and just baked biscuits (different varieties)

Peanuts: Either boiled or roasted peanuts, which are neatly given in newspapers which are cone shaped

Fruits n Veggies: Cut watermelons, Jackfruit pieces, Cut Guavas with salt and red chilli powder, Cut cucumbers, cut mangoes

PS: Thanks mom for introducing me to most of this. And thanks to G, he also loves all this, so we can enjoy it together