It’s a bit like bumping into a schoolmate after years — and finding that your once-pleasant-but-unremarkable friend is today a razzly-dazzly veejay or techno-billionaire. You’re startled, impressed and a trifle tongue-tied. That’s how I feel as I stand at a small stall at Mumbai’s Colaba bazaar, clutching the oily square of newspaper and preparing to bite into a soft pav smeared with glowering garlic chutney, stuffed with a plump, yellow vada, and garnished with a wicked green chilli. The last time I encountered a vada pav, it was a functional and filling snack. It was the carbohydrate shot that kept us going during long college days packed with Malthus and statistical medians. The non-sloshiest dish on offer during ST bus rides from Sholapur to Satara. It was what harried officegoers grabbed as they poured out of VT station every morning on their way to work. “ Chacha, ek vadapaa, chutney kam ,” they intoned nasally, exact change in hand.
The great transformation must have taken place when I was looking the other way — perhaps preoccupied with the mundane matters of mummyhood. At any rate, sometime during the last decade, the humble vada pav shed its down-market image and metamorphosed into a Page 3 celebrity. From the cheapest eat on the block, it suddenly became ‘Mumbai’s iconic street food’. The subject of adoring blogs, academic studies and fridge magnets.
No wonder then that vada pav now pops up at five-star restaurants and trendy eateries across the country. It’s the raison d’être for at least two nationwide food chains. And has merrily adopted exotic avatars — from Szechwan and corn mayonnaise to ‘sliders’ with salsa. The snack also boasts its very own World Vada Pav Day on August 23. (And why not, pray, if you can have National Deworming Day?)
All of this may seem like much ado about a potato podge in a pav. Though if the potato is mixed with just the right amount of onion and garlic and ginger and chillies and fried to crisp perfection in a vat of sizzling oil; if the pav has a thin soft crust and a fluffy middle; if both the dry red and wet green chutneys are tear-inducingly spicy and zingy; and if the green mirchi beckons brightly, you begin to understand what the fuss is about. Ask Sachin Tendulkar, whose love for vada pav is so great, his friend Vinod Kambli gave him 35 of them when he broke Sunil Gavaskar’s 34-century Test record in 2006. One for each century, aila!
Perfect vada pav moments are not, however, to be found in chandeliered restaurants or plasticky malls. For this fast food was born in the jostly, germy gallis of Mumbai, and that is where it belongs.
One busy morning in 1971 — or so the urban legend goes — a commuter rushed out of Mumbai’s Dadar station. He was late and hungry. He asked a food vendor to shove a fat batata vada in a pav, which he could snarf down on the go. Soon, the said vendor, an enterprising soul named Ashok Vaidya, introduced the innovation on his hand-scrawled menu. His customers thought it was a jolly good idea. So did his competitors. And soon the vada pav had become as much a part of Bombay as its potholes.
What I love about this story is that the vada pav is so much like my city — a merry mishmash of cultures, cuisines and coincidences. The fat batata vada at the heart of the snack is as Maharashtrian as a nine-yard sari. But the pav seems to have arrived on our shores with the Portuguese. And the various chutneys are innovations, Mumbai-ishtyle. ( Thoda coconut try karte hai. Chineej (sic) sauce daal lete hai… )
The pav into which the vada is thrust is the sort that is available at every pavwala’s shop in Mumbai. It has a thin brown crust, pillowy middle, and is perfect for dunking into piping hot chai, mopping up extravagantly spicy keema and, of course, enveloping hot vadas. And while there’s confusion about the origin of its name — some say it came from the Portuguese word pao; others maintain that bakers used to knead the dough with their feet. It’s widely agreed that the earliest bread-maker of Bombay was a Goan named Vitorino Mudot, who set up a bakery in Cavel in 1819. Two centuries later, there are around 2,000 bakeries here.
The pavs are deftly slit and — before the vada is stuffed inside — slathered with a sour-spicy green chutney and dry red garlicky chutney. Each vada pav vendor has his own flavours and these chutneys build loyalty more effectively than any frequent-flier programme.
There are around 50,000 vada pav vendors on Mumbai’s chaotic pavements. But the protagonist of our story has displayed remarkable social and geographic mobility. It is now available in malls and food courts around the country — dispensed by guys in gloves for chains like Jumboking and Goli Vada Pav No 1.
More startling is the fact that it has flounced onto some of the priciest menus in the city, where it appears in fancy guises. Depending on the whim of the chef, the vada pav is sometimes deconstructed so that the vada batter is served as boondi, the potato bhaji is turned into a mousse and the chutney doled out in edible corn-starch plastic bags; at other times, it is served alongside a pipette-full of pureed chutney; or turned inside-out so that the pav is stuffed inside the potato and deep-fried.
All of which is fine and dandy — as long as the fellow with the sputtering kadhai and killer red chutney at Flora Fountain continues to dole out his masterpiece for ₹10.
Homemade Vada Pav
( To be attempted only if you don’t have a vada pav maestro near home )
Garlic chutney:
Ingredients
* 10 garlic cloves, peeled
* 1tbsp peanut oil, plus extra for frying
* 35gm dessicated coconut
* 1tsp chilli powder
Method
1. Brown the whole garlic cloves in a frying pan with a little peanut oil. Add the coconut, stirring until golden. Blend together with the chilli powder and the remaining peanut oil. Season with salt. Set aside.
Green chutney:
Ingredients
* Large bunch of fresh coriander
* Handful of mint leaves
* About 5 green chilies, chopped
* Juice of 1 lemon
* 1tbsp oil
Method
1. Blend the coriander, mint, chillies and lemon juice with a splash of water. Add the oil and some salt, and blend again. Set aside.
Batata vadas:
Ingredients
* 2 green chillies, finely chopped
* 1 garlic clove, crushed
* A small piece of ginger, peeled and grated
* 1tsp black mustard seeds
* 10 curry leaves
* 500gm cold mashed potatoes
* Salt to taste
* 4tbsp fresh coriander leaves, chopped
* 100gm besan
* A pinch of turmeric
* A pinch of baking powder
* 80ml water
* Oil
Method
1. Mash together the chillies, garlic and ginger. Heat 2tbsp oil in a pan, add the mustard seeds and cook until they pop. Add the curry leaves and cook for 10 seconds. Stir in the chillies and cook for 10 more seconds.
2. Add the mashed potatoes, salt and coriander and mix well. Set aside and let it cool.
3. Pour oil for deep-frying into a pan. Shape the potato mixture into about 20 balls.
4. In a separate bowl, mix the besan, turmeric and baking powder with water to make the batter.
5. Dip the potato balls in batter and fry in batches for about six minutes each, until golden. Drain on kitchen paper.
6. Combine store-bought pav, the hot vadas, chutneys and fried green chilies.
( This is a new monthly series on regional favourites and how they came to be that. )
Shabnam Minwalla is a journalist and author of The Six Spellmakers of Dorabji Street