West Meets South with Dabeli and Vada Pav

HYDERABAD: Prenderghast Road in Secunderabad, better known as Sindhi Colony, is a popular destination for street food, especially for good quality vegetarian snacks. From pizzas to special dosas, kulfis to chaat, the road has people flocking here in the evenings to try them out. One street food cart which does brisk business is Chachaji, which is widely known for the two snacks it sells - Dabelis and Vada Pav from Western India.

The owners relocated to Hyderabad from Gujarat more than a decade back, and the cart has been operational since 2004. The husband Kantilal Kanabar is a Gujarati, and his wife Megha a Maharashtrian, which has helped them to offer two most popular snacks from these two states. The shop was named Chachaji and the owners are known in the neighbourhood as Chachaji and Chachiji since then. The recipes are kept as authentic as possible and use fresh as well as good quality ingredients. In fact, all the chutneys are prepared at home every day and brought to the shop. 

Dabeli is a snack from the Kutch region of Gujarat. It means “pressed” in Gujarati, and the hot and sweet snack has a vegetarian filling with masalas, chutneys and sev inside a pav. The taste comes mainly from the composition of the masala and chutney which are usually proprietary recipes of well-known dabeli joints.  The filling at Chachaji has potatoes, dry fruit pastes and fresh fruits like pomegranates and apples. There are two varieties of chutneys. The first is made from garlic and dry red chillies while the other has tamarind and dates in it. The peanuts used here in the masala are the large, tasty ones brought from Bharuch in Gujarat.

Vada Pav, on the other hand, is a Maharashtrian delicacy popular in Mumbai as an on-the-go snack. The snack came up as a quick meal for the mill workers of central Bombay in the seventies. A deep-fried batata vada or potato dumpling is served inside a pav or bun and served with chutneys and sautéed green chillies. At Chachaji, the Vada Pav is a little spicier than what you get in Mumbai, keeping the Hyderabadi palate in mind.  

The vada has ginger, garlic and red chillies apart from mashed potato, and this is fried after coating it with besan. A sweet and spicy chutney is layered inside the pav before adding the vada. A special chutney having curd, moong dal and chillies is served with it, apart from the usual tamarind one. 
Chachaji opens his shop in the late. Hyderabadis  travel up to 10 km to try out the food there. Both the vada pav and the dabeli are priced at `25 each. He even offers to customise the spice depending on the customer palate. 

Sabyasachi is a food enthusiast and blogs at www.foodaholix.in