Where to find the most fantastic street food in India
It's 4am. I'm the only foreigner in the heaving crowds at the Mumbai fish market. The jetty is packed tight like a rugby scrum, the marina rammed with boats. On land, the fishermen's fearsome wives are selling their catch. But it isn't the fish that brought me to this spot, it's the chai, which is rich and creamy and the best I've ever drunk.
My search for the best Indian street food has already taken my girlfriend and me to Goa and the glorious Matsya Freestyle Kitchen, a tiny restaurant on a roof 10 minutes from Arambol beach where we ate super-fresh oysters with coconut cream and green chilli. Meanwhile, in the old city in Delhi the Muslim influence means, unusually for India, lots of meat: butter chicken and dense little kebabs. Next we escape to Ladakh where dusty desert runs straight into snow-capped mountains. We hire a Royal Enfield motorbike and drive the switchback roads. The food here is an unexpected delight: Nepalese momos, dumplings stuffed with spiced vegetables.
Afterwards we head to Lucknow with its Raj-era splendours and awesome culinary reputation. Family connections have landed us an invitation to a smart mansion full of stuffed tigers where we are compelled to down a glass of what turns out to be bhang lassi before being led into the old town's warren of alleyways to a hole-in-the-wall where we eat gold-standard shami kebabs. Originally created for a toothless nabob who couldn't chew, they are made by massaging goat meat, then grinding it down until it is almost a paste. After a few days of gluttony, we go west by train. The food onboard is a simple, welcome tonic: dal, rice, chapati and pickles served in airline-style trays, but made with a pride that would put many restaurants to shame.
In Calcutta the highlights are the kathi rolls - chicken and egg wrapped in buttery paratha - and doi, a sumptuous pudding of yogurt baked with cardamom, rose and pistachio. Finally, I return to Mumbai, where an old colleague, Nishant Mitra, takes me to the food carts of Bandra. A few stalls down the road, I find what I've been looking for. It is intensely marinated, bright red from the masala. It's been charred but is still fatty with a surprising depth of flavour, the distillate of India's glorious street-snack culture. "What's this?" I ask. "Goat's nipple," he tells me.
For more on Will Bowlby's restaurant, Kricket Soho, visit kricket.co.uk
This feature was first published in Condé Nast Traveller June 2017
