On a self-appointed nostalgia-driven food tour through Kamla Nagar to relive some memories, I came upon Brajwasi – it had been so long and, shamefully, it had almost faded in my consciousness. But all it took was one visit to restore it back with huge aplomb into my memory in which it will now remain more firmly than ever.
Braj or the mythical land of Lord Krishna that can be said to occupy vaguely parts of present day Uttar Pradesh is known for its ‘pure’ vegetarian cuisine – even sometimes sans onion, sans garlic – sans anything tamsik therefore ;-). The cuisine born in such a milieu has however been very innovative and makes sterling use of key spices, dairy, cereals and of course vegetables to make up for the lack of all the taboo ingredients that the rest of us so easily rely on to flavour our food. Brajwasi in Kamla Nagar has long been in the service of propagating some selected popular street food and mithai items from the repertoire of brajbhoomi cuisine.
The first thing to note is that Brajwasi open shutters at 7am and serves right up till 11pm. So you could pretty much eat through the day here. The other thing is that it has no seating! This can connote significant fun if you are like me – but if also like me at other times, you crave to park yourself somewhere comfortable when attempting a thali-like meal then this may present as the first challenge. At that point, peep into whatever is their grub for the day, various tubs of which will be displayed at their counter and you will find all desire for comfort disappearing, such is the massive need to immediately dig into the food. Like everyone else, await your turn at the sole aluminum counter which will serve as the dining table while you stand literally on the street and eat. Oh and the dinnerware are those foil covered paper ones! Super duper fun!
The thali meal comes at Rs 80 and includes the following: either lachha paratha or missi or tandoori roti – you get two of those; two veggie dishes to choose from the six or so they cook everyday including aloo, dal, gobhi, paneer; plus boondi raita. For a mere Rs 10 or 20 you get another katori of any extra dish.
So this is what my friend and I ended up feasting on: The basic thali (Rs 80) which had DAL MAKHANI, PALAK PANEER, BOONDI RAITA, LACHHA PARATHAS plus we ordered alongside a katori each of ALOO RASSA (Rs 10 per katori), VRINDAVANI KADI PAKODI (Rs 20 per bowl), all these served with a bowl of mixed pickle dominated by carrots. Additionally, we ordered a RABRI KULLADIYA (an earthen pot of rabri) – which is a genuine pot of gold for a mere Rs 35. As a takeaway, I ordered half a kg of MASALA MATHRI for Rs 60.
All the dishes were A-grade – piping hot, fantastically fresh, subtly spiced, and oh so awesomely good on that cold Delhi winter morning. Particular favourites were the PALAK PANEER and of all things, the BOONDI RAITA. And to think that if I try imagining how that palak could have been processed I can work my OCD-self up to a point of hysteria – but, shockingly that self was nowhere to be found and so with zero regard for such hygiene concerns, I almost single-handedly polished off that palak paneer – and that trust so effortlessly reposed in Brajwasi was not misplaced because not a single untoward digestive trouble did I face in the days after its consumption.
It was a mystery why I loved that BOONDI RAITA so much when everything on the surface was slated against it – it had a runny dahi element, it was a chilled thing on a very nippy Delhi winter day, it was almost undersalted, it was barely spiced and the boondis themselves may have been soaking in it from the start, rendering their texture anything but crunchy which is how I usually prefer boondi raitas – yet, counter intuitively, it was magnificent!!! The lovely PARATHA, buttered and crushed nicely and conveyed straight from the oven on to my plate went so well with a scoop of dal makhani and then a spoonful of that raita.
The DAL was properly butter laced and something that did taste as if it had cooked slowly, lovingly for long. The lentils assume a texture when they experience this sort of gestation period which is not exactly captured by saying it was soft or mushy – that slow cooking brings some other thing out of the humble ingredient that makes a really solid dal makhani truly divine. This one was so when it didn’t even use onion!
And whatever praise I heap on the RABRI KULLADIYA is going to be insufficient – you just have to try this to know what heaven must taste like!!! It was Spectacular with a capital S! And I have been surviving on those stellar MATHRIS, best friends of my morning tea, ever since I got back to Pune - rationing them severely so that I can squeeze more mileage out of them!!! There are only two left now - I shall be very very cranky from Monday onwards!!!
The shop is famous for its sweets and savouries, lotta handpicked classics from Brajbhoomi – so the badam milk, the pedas, the luscious gulab jamuns (at least 6 people took away big tubs of it as we ploughed through our meal), the saffron pistachio filled raj bhogs, khasta kachoris, the nimkis of various varieties, the bedmi puris, sitaphal or pumpkin subzi etc. There is a cross-cultural influence from the Bengali culinary tradition too (there are all those overlaps that the Mathura, Vrindavan, Benares belt has with the Bengali Vaishnav tradition after all) which is always easy to decipher in the chamchams, the spongy fresh rasgullas, the many chhena-based sweets etc.
The entire time we were trying to figure out what to eat and then of course the actual eating, Rajeev Brajwasi, of the family that runs this joint, was tending to all the Krishna-related iconography that abounds in his eatery. He took more time to carefully, devoutly clean every idol, framed picture of his favourite god than most of us do to get dressed for a huge life event. It was so mesmerising to see that ritual – first the cleaning, then the draping with new costume then the flowers then the adorning of their visage using a variety of sandal and sindoor pastes – so anthropomorphised was the whole deal. It reminded me of my granny at her daily morning routine of tending to her pantheon in the home shrine she had – all the dolls-house utensils etc. that she would in a meditative trance almost, clean, dry, arrange every single day for almost all the blessed years she lived. There was no hostile religious conservatism that marred those rituals – it was a very spiritual, peace inducing almost rhythmic activity done with so much faith and devotion that it even easily won over the respect of the agnostic atheist me.
The adorably hilarious part was the firm grip on reality Rajeev ji continued to have while doing a task he seemed really spiritually subsumed by – he kept suggesting things for us to try out from wherever he was located in that hovel of a shop as he attended to what must be a long-drawn out daily habit. So picture him at one point standing on the stool, anointing the good lord’s framed picture atop a doorway with intricate dots of sandal paste with that focussed slight mouth opened, bit of the tongue out posture one has while making alpana or rangoli – bang in the middle of that, he saying to me while looking at the picture "madam aap lachha paratha lengi kya?" or bellowing to his shop assistant "madam ko ek kadi pakodi doh" and spelling out his surname when I asked him what he was called!!! It was such an entertaining morning I tell you!!! You must sample the fare if you are in the vicinity and are not one of those cock-a-snook-at-all-things-vegetarian and do possess an affectionate regard for such glorious relics of streetfood culture that Brajwasi bravely continues to represent.
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