The authentic street food without the heartburn

Devour tender Amritsari kulchey with zesty chholey 

Delhi, as we all know, is not the city that we grew up in. While it has changed drastically over the years, what’s heart-warming is that a few things still remain the same. And among them is the sight of a cart with a bag full of kulchas, and a tilted, golden cauldron on the side, indicating that a pair of kulchas would soon be placed on a Sal leaf next to a  dona of boiled chholey topped with onion slivers.

My heart leapt when I saw one such chholey kulchey wallah on the roadside last week. I couldn’t park there, so I decided to look for something online. And I found just what I wanted – boiled chholey with Amritsari tandoori kulchey — from an eatery called  Kulcha Ambarsariya Da in Amar Colony main market, Lajpat Nagar.

I am very fond of stuffed Amritsari kulchas. Usually, the filling consists of potatoes and onions, but here they have other varieties too. I asked for the usual potato-onion kulcha (₹120) and a green chili kulcha (₹130). The kulchas came with generous helpings of chholey, a small pack of butter, and some tamarind-and-onion chutney. The chutney was runny and went well with the chholey.

The food — our lunch for that day — didn’t disappoint me. It was still warm when it reached my doorstep, nicely packed in small containers and brown paper packets secured in a bag. I chopped some onions and then got ready to demolish the fare.

The kulchas were very, very good, indeed. They were soft, and the stuffing gave the bread a nice texture as well as taste. The potato stuffed kulcha was moist and tender. I loved the typical Amritsari chholey, a bit different from the handi chholey, for it comes in a light gravy.

The tamarind chutney added considerable zest to the dish, giving it a saucy piquancy that worked well with the mildly spiced chholey. I looked at our jar of dried mango pickle (another old favourite, picked up from a local shop) but decided that the meal didn’t need it. I bit into a crunchy onion chunk, wrapped a plump kulcha piece around the chholey, dipped it into the chutney, and popped it into the mouth.

The fare was so good that two days later I placed a repeat order. This time we asked for a gobhi kulcha (₹130) and mung dal kulcha (₹150). The former was a bit hard at the edges, but the mung dal one – stuffed and covered with dal – was excellent. The menu includes aloo methi kulcha (₹140), Szechwan kulcha (₹150), and a cheese burst kulcha (₹170), apart from rice with rajma, chholey, soya etc (₹90 to ₹115).