Kolkata Street Food Experience

Last Monday evening was cold and wet. I was tired and Susen was limping around as he had somehow injured his foot the day before. If I hadn’t already had paid good money for tickets to the ‘Kolkata Street Food Experience’ it would definitely have been a curl up under the duvet in front of the TV-type evening. Instead we found ourselves in the streets around Brixton (slightly off my radar these days) looking for an old railway arch housing the ‘Whirled Cinema’ beneath it. We eventually located it down an alleyway behind a parking lot and I think if I hadn’t had Susen’s company I might have thought better of walking down there. Despite his hobbling and injured foot, he represented some sort of male protection, however illusory.

[caption id="attachment_431" align="alignleft" width="225"] Angus in action at his stall[/caption]

Stairs led up to the small cinema (hired out for private use) which had been transformed into a hippy wonderland with kitsch Indian-style signs, fairy lights and garlands of flowers. The inspiration behind all this is Angus Denoon and his roving street food stall ‘The Everybody Love Love Jhal Muri Express’. Street food is the new big thing, though nowhere near approaching the range in the US (or indeed Kolkata or Bangkok).

Angus Denoon writes on his website (streetfoodkolkata.com) that he first made jhal muri when asked to make a dish from Kolkata where he had been filming the street food there. He made jhal muri – a type of Indian snack food – as it involved no cooking and was relatively easy to mix together the assembled ingredients. He then began selling it from a converted, decorated supermarket trolley but has since moved slightly more upmarket with a van. Versions of this exist all over India: jhal muri is the Bengali name (similar to, but not quite the same, I am told, as the more widely known bhel puri). Years ago, I used to buy take away cartons of a similar kind of chaat (snack) in Manchester. Although it was more papri chaat (papri wafers, boiled potato, chick peas with yoghurt, tamarind chutney, fresh coriander and sev), I loved the flavours, especially of tamarind and coriander – similar to those in jhal muri. Jhal muri is a mixture of puffed rice, sev, nuts, chopped onion, cucumber, lime juice, spices, tamarind chutney and fresh coriander – usually mixed together freshly to order in a bowl, then served in a paper cone with a spoon. When I first knew Susen, he made me a version from his childhood, when it was more difficult to get hold of Indian ingredients. It consisted of rice krispies, chopped cucumber and peanuts mixed together – interesting, but not quite authentic. [Last year the new Quality Foods Indian supermarket in Hounslow also had a stall selling bhel puri and pani puri: a real rival for Angus’s Jhal Muri Express, although lacking the colourful signs].



But back to Monday evening. There were 4 stalls in all serving as many snacks as you wanted. As well as Angus’s jhal muri stall, there was one with a mixture of sev, red lentil dhal, onions, tamarind, coconut, lime juice, garam masala, chaat masala and coriander – served on a leaf-type plate. At first glance, a strange combination but actually very good. Another stall had pani puri (gol goppa) – stuffed with potato and chutney but lacking the cumin water that really makes it explode with taste in your mouth. Finally, a stall with lassi, chai and a sweet snack mixture of Gujarati sweet dumplings in mango lassi with lime juice. Not a combination I had come across before – but then it was apparently one of Angus’s inventions.

Looking around, the audience was mainly white English, probably fairly young, educated – I could see myself back in the 80s in my soul-searching, travelling, back-packing days trying to find some meaning in life beyond the office blocks and insurance companies of the Croydon suburb where I grew up. We spotted only one other man of Indian origin, although the woman serving on the lassi and chai stall said her mother – although English - had grown up in Kolkata as her family were working out there.

Once everyone had been fed – probably around 150 people at this point, which felt more like a small private party – time for the film. Filmed and edited by Angus himself after several trips to Kolkata, ‘Street Food Kolkata – the Film’ was a delight. Starting with dawn breaking and the city slowly waking up, it films the various stallholders cooking, with the story told by the people who make the food and those who eat it. The lack of commentary meant the focus was entirely on the food, the cooking and people themselves, with an inspired music soundtrack by Larry Lush. The vendors showed amazing skill, ingenuity, resilience and sheer hard work in producing cheap and nutritious food to sell on the streets: ranging from luchis (fried rotis), shingaras (Bengali samosas) to biryani, Chinese noodles and sweet jilapi (jelabi in Hindi). Their skill, dexterity and entrepreneurship would rival some of the top restaurants and businesses in London. The marketplace is extremely competitive – one commented that if they don’t make tasty food, they will not be in business very long.

Food is also cheap, even by Kolkata standards. One tour guide filmed said a plate of food would only cost around 17–20 Rs (around 20–25p). You might criticise the lack of hygiene or health and safety – but the other side is that there, people are earning a living for themselves producing the food and feeding nutritious food to poor people who could not otherwise afford to eat (or have the means to cook for themselves). By contrast, here in the UK the poorest people – instead of having access to cheap and nutritious food cooked on street stalls – are at the mercy of the large supermarkets or fried burger / chicken take-aways. It is possible to eat cheaply and well in the UK if cooking for yourself, but it requires resolve and motivation to resist the temptation of empty calories or cheap offers in supermarkets, together with culinary skill (social / cultural capital) that poorer and socially disadvantaged people might lack. In the UK finding good prepared food is a much harder task, leading to malnutrition and obesity when there is limited choice.

Customers for street food in Kolkata, however, did seem to come from all walks of life – both male and female, English speaking – though perhaps their choices are selective, depending on who they trusted or the type of food.

And so we left the streets of Kolkata and hippy grotto under the railway arch, back onto the wet and rainy streets of Loughborough Junction and Brixton – another exploration in itself, with Brixton’s African and Caribbean influences and a whole other world within London.

Further links:

http://eat.st

British Street Food Awards

Angus Denoon's blog