Monday, November 1st, 2004
Pao wow
Mumbai has fusion cuisine and confusion cuisine (the best example being a Punjabi Chinese concoction that passes by the curious and unrelated name of American Chopsuey). But in the city of Indigo and India Jones and Celini and Dum Pukht and the Zodiac Grill, it is the humble pao that reigns.
For without the pao, most of the city’s meals would only be half complete. Where would vada pao, kheema pao, burji pao, omelette pao, misal pao, pao bhaji and so forth be without pao? Try having a batata vada with sliced bread. You can’t fold one slice over a vada. Or even hold the vada between two slices. No sir, it is the pao’s accommodating nature that has helped it win a million palates over.
If vada pao had an address, it would be every street. In a city where real estate is dear, a vada pao stall takes up barely five square feet. The vadas go straight from the frying pan into the pao. A wet green chutney and a dry red chutney welcome the vada into the pao’s fold.
Outside most railway stations and bus depots, you get pao and eggs to order. Omelette pao, burji pao, pao and diced boiled eggs. You also get pao bhaji, which, apart from its own taste and appearance, also has a sound all its own. You can hear pao bhaji from a mile. The clatter of the ladle on the cast iron tava as chopped tomatoes, potatoes, and mashed green peas are beaten to a pulp, the raking sound as the ladle brings the bubbling bhaji to the centre of the tava, the hiss of a glob of butter being added with a flourish. The pao is warmed on the tava and some butter is slapped on before serving it rich and calorific and downright irresistible (do not try this on an Atkins diet). Pao bhaji has leapt the great divide and, in a display of inverse snobbery, is served at five-star coffee shops. The Taj certainly serves it at its coffee shops in Apollo Bunder and Bandra (I am not sure about The President).
Misal pao is like pao bhaji except that it is a gravy dish, is made from dry green peas and the peas are whole not pureed. In this form, it is called usal. When you add a mixture of sev, peanuts and gathia to usal, you get misal. You dip the pao in the misal, it soaks up the gravy and scoops the peas and mixture in one fell swoop. Sliced bread can soak up the gravy but isn’t quite as accomplished at the scooping bit.
In pockets of Fort, where Irani restaurants still survive, as also along strips of Mohammad Ali Road and Mahim, you get kheema pao. The kheema is usually made from lamb (never from beef, the establishments inform you) and served with whole or slit green chillies.
The Irani restaurants also serve variants of the pao: one is gutli pao, which is hard like a French baguette. It is served with butter and goes best when dunked in chai (which dulls its hard edge). The other pao variant is the sweet bun, studded with resins. Chai is a faithful accompanist here as well. What joy if you time yourself to get the buns warm from the oven. The butter melts from the warmth and, when dunked in tea, every mouthful is an intermingling of butter, resins and tea.
While the city winds down and goes to bed, the pao continues its 24-hour vigil especially outside railway stations. As the night shift goes home groggy, it makes a dinner of burji pao even as the milkmen and newspaper boys breakfast on the omelette pao. Pao is the common thread between breakfast and dinner, contributing to the optical illusion of a city that never sleeps.