Vada Pavs, The Pakoras and the Chutney
In the summer of 1984 my new band scored big! We had not one, but two shows to play on the same night. The first was a live broadcast on the radio station WBRS for their show, The Joint. We then needed to pack up our equipment and hotfoot it to Inman Square in Cambridge to play a second show at the Inn-Square Men’s Bar. With no time for normal dinner, it would need to be on-the-fly, if at all. A block down from the bar and across the street from an Indian restaurant named Haveli, was a pizza shop that I had been directed to. And why not? It was fast, close and…named Aram’s Pizza! Mmmmm, I said, that’s my name! So in I went. A few years later, I was encouraged to try out another one of “my” establishments, Aram’s Doughnuts in Belmont. The doughnuts turned out to be pretty good.
While Aram is an unusual name in the US, in Armenia, it is actually quite common. However, because a large Armenian population exists in the Boston area — particularly in nearby Watertown, it is not too surprising to find a few small businesses borrowing “my” moniker. A store or two in the Watertown area sort of made sense to me, but I was in no way expecting to hear about a small restaurant in Mumbai also bearing my name.
One night, while watching an episode of “Delhi Food Walks” that was exploring Mumbai street food, my jaw totally dropped. One of featured vendors was named Aram’s Vada Pav. So wait, “that’s my name,” I must have exclaimed. Is the owner Armenian? Is it in Watertown? (Not likely, and definitely not!) Apparently, this establishment is a very popular takeout spot in the heart of Mumbai. Aram’s has been around since 1939 and easily pops up in web searches and on YouTube.
Aram’s is more of a restaurant than the typical carts that most street food is associated with. But the big attraction is the Vada Pavs which are distributed through a takeout counter outside the restaurant. This counter, where you can order one (or more) Vada Pavs, is the object of several YouTube videos that show a seemingly never-ending line for Vada Pavs. The cost? All of ₹20 — which is around 25¢ in US currency. Many people opt to eat them right away on the sidewalk. “So what’s a Vada Pav?” you might be asking. Think of it as a spicy, deep-fried vegetarian slider covered with a few fragrant chutneys to perk things up. Hot, spicy and perfect for a midday Mumbai picnic…
The Kenmore Square Picnic
Vegetable Pakoras, while not Vada Pav, also make for a satisfying snack and can certainly be consumed outside. They are standard on many Indian restaurant menus in the US, occasionally masquerading as Bhaji or Bhajia. Pakoras typically consist of some sort of vegetable — often onions — coated in a spicy chickpea flour batter and deep-fried. What’s not to love (unless you’re watching your weight)? In India, dozens of varieties are available, especially from street vendors. Mirch (chili) or bread pakoras are common. Unfortunately, most restaurants in the Boston area used to limit their pakoras to vegetable or chicken back in the eighties. Over time a few expanded their offerings to include paneer, mirch or even fish pakoras.
My first experience with a vegetable pakora came in the quest for cheap (and quick) dinner before another show I was playing back in 1984. I was in Kenmore Square after sound check at the Rat. Hungry, but short of money and time for dinner, I wandered a few doors down to India Quality Restaurant and picked up an order of vegetable pakoras for takeout. The waiter handed me an paper bag of pakoras and a styrofoam cup full of a reddish chutney. I went outside, sat on the steps and dug in. The pakoras had vegetables in them, were generously coated with chickpea batter and fried to a deep brown.
This was also the first time I tried onion chutney, and that experience was unforgettable. The chutney hit all the marks of what I grew to crave in a restaurant-style onion chutney. It was a bit spicy, a bit salty and had some tang to it. It offered a perfect compliment to the pakoras and I enjoyed my dinner immensely. I think it cost all of $2.00 by the way.
This experience would set me off on one of several khojanas (search or quest) to reproduce at home something I had enjoyed in a restaurant, or in this case, outside a restaurant. And I went on a tear, emptying every bowl or container of onion chutney I came in contact with for a long, long time. I was obsessed with finding the secret — which turned out to be not as straightforward as it would seem. To complicate matters, there wasn’t just one type of onion chutney on restaurant tables, and each restaurant seemed to have their own take on this relish.
And so began my quest to unlock the secrets of onion chutney, a quest that spanned many years! I would check the index of every Indian cookbook; look online; attempt to reverse engineer the recipe by spreading the chutney out on a plate; and even unashamedly asked waiters for the recipe — for which I received vague answers. The cookbook recipes that I did find (and try) turned out to be completely different than what I was looking to reproduce.
After several years of experimenting and searching, I was able to narrow down the ingredients to onions, tomato of some kind, oil and/or vinegar, spices and salt. But no matter how I combined these ingredients, my efforts in the kitchen were still falling short. Eventually I put my quest aside, but every so often, I would search the web anew in hopes of finding something — anything — to help me with my recipe! Finally my persistence was rewarded when I found, on the Curry Guy’s website, a recipe for the restaurant style onion chutney that I was craving! I only waited a few days before trying it out.
As it turned out, while my experiments had not been terribly far off the mark, he had discovered the secret ingredient that seemed to make all the difference. As crazy as sounds, the veiled ingredient was: Ketchup! What???? And then it hit me. The chutney I was searching for must be a creation of Indian restaurants in the west aimed at western diners. This would explain why I had not found this recipe in any of the cookbooks I had been searching through. Although, in retrospect, I remember one recipe in Madhur Jaffrey’s An Invitation to Indian Cooking that was actually close to some of the local chutneys. But hers did not include ketchup.
As I thought about it, ketchup, a somewhat sweet condiment, made sense for diners who were not accustomed to hot food since the sugar would help to neutralize some of the chili fire in the chutney. After bringing ketchup into my recipe and making a few other adjustments, I finally arrived at a recipe that I was happy with. Interestingly, I recently had a chance to sample India Quality’s onion chutney again. Unfortunately, it did not hold up to that styrofoam cup from my Kenmore Square picnic.