Kolkata's Street Food

Yesterday I realized something. Street food here is amazing. I mean, it's not that I haven't already realized this, because I have.

What I mean is this. Let's say I'm in Chicago, and I find myself suddenly hungry. What I am most likely to do is pop into the nearest coffee shop, probably Starbucks, and grab a coffee to go, along with a semi-okay-tasting pastry (especially if it's Starbucks). The grand total for my trip would be something around six dollars or so, and I would have just fed myself some sort of a sweet, simple carbohydrate snack that wouldn't really leave me very satisfied.

Not that I'm bashing this. I love being in Chicago, and I love popping into Starbucks and getting a pastry and coffee to go.

The other alternative is to go to a Seven Eleven or something and get a bag of chips. Or maybe a fast food restaurant if the hunger is really pressing.

In Kolkata, it's different. Yes, there are the window shops (there is no way of describing these--I'll have to take a picture, but they're everywhere) where you can get any kind of processed snack and/or drink that your heart desires, usually for around Rs 10-20.

But then there are the street stalls. All of which, I am told, are completely illegal. And completely delicious!

Street stalls sell amazing food--much of which is fried, but good food can also be found. So today, let me highlight some of the most common stalls you will find on the street, and what you can expect to pay for food at each one.

• Fruit sellers. Cost: Rs 5-10. Bananas and guava seem to be the most common fruits that people grab on the go, but you can also find oranges, and apples if you're into eating fruit with peels. Which I'm not.
  
• Luchi and Alu Dom. Cost: Rs 10ish. Luchi is a fried flatbread, which automatically makes it delicious. For your ten rupees, you usually get four luchis and a scoop of alu dom, which is boiled potatoes in a spicy gravy. This is one of Jarrod's favorites, but I'm not a huge fan of the potato part, so I generally don't get it.
• Phootchkas. Cost: Rs 10ish. Think of phootchkas as chips and dip. Only instead of chips, you are given a crunchy, puffy, hollow chiplike ball that the owner of the stand has punched a hole in with his thumb and stuffed a small amount of a spicy mixture of deliciousness the consistency of bean dip and then dipped into a bucket of tamarind juice. You can get about five of these for ten rupees.
• Wraps. Cost: Around Rs 20, depending on what kind you get. Wraps are pretty much what they sound like, only more delicious. The outside is flatbread fried in a pool of oil, and then filled with spiced meat, paneer, or egg, along with a generous helping of onions, some chilis, and ambiguous sauces. They're pretty decent, and make for a filling lunch if you're on the go.
• Samosas. Cost: Rs 5? Yes, the stereotypical Indian Thing--the samosa, a fried pastry stuffed with a spiced mixture of potato, peas, peanuts, or whatever else the guy making them wants to put in there. They're good! But the insides definitely vary from place to place.
• Sweets. Cost: Around Rs 5. Yes, there are the sweet shops that sell various kinds of milky sweet treats along with sweet yogurt. There are also these orange squiggly sweets that look a bit like syrup-soaked funnel cakes, which I haven't tried since two years ago when I got food poisoning after visiting an Indian buffet in Chicago. So I do need to give these a fair shot again. Oh, I guess the name is "jalebi". My favorite, though is like a jalebi, but instead of being funnel-caked out and squiggly, it's just like a ball of fried syrupy goodness, with the occasional fennel seed inside.
• Juice stands. Cost: Rs 20-ish, unless you get mango lassi! There are these stands, covered in dangling fruit, and you can get any fruit you want ground up in a blender, pressed through a strainer, and served with a bit of black (smoky-flavored) salt and sugar. It's quite delicious and refreshing. There are also sugarcane juice guys on every corner who have these big presses with bells dangling off the handles that jingle when they turn them, which they do constantly just to attract attention. I've heard the juice is good, but I've never tried it.
• Qwality Wells carts. Cost: Rs 10-20. These guys are seriously everywhere. They sell packaged ice cream from a cart, nothing special, but it's good stuff.

Anyway, that's just a brief overview of what all there is. Oh yeah, there's also the cha guys who sometimes can make you toast and eggs, and they always have biscuits in jars, just in case you want something to nibble on with your tea. Good stuff.

I guess I'll miss this tasty, cheap fare when I come back to the US. But I've got another ten months, so I'm not getting nostalgic just yet.