835: Naan Pisses Him Off. Vada Pav Gets the Medal of Honor. Meherwan Irani Returns!

25:07The meal was incredible. And there's enough friends here whose restaurants I've yet to visit that I'm going to probably enjoy a lot. I mean, of course I'll go to all the Indian restaurants. I love the scene at Bungalow. It's just incredible. I love the maca. Sema is just, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, look, I think we, as much as we should be fair, it's okay to be unfair and rude for your home team. That's what I'm down for. That's what I'm down for. My friends and all the brown people that are doing great things in New York City. Man, you're on the money there about visiting friends and supporting.

25:39I love that you're friends with Alex at Chiquito. What a terrific chef. That was an incredible meal last night. I mean, we just rolled out of there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's amazing. So, it's cool. Like, obviously, I think I've had, like, plenty of meals here where it wasn't Indian food at all. Yeah. Yeah. And I know you're a huge fan of France and you go there a lot and you love French food. Correct. But even when I'm there, I'll visit a friend. So great friends of mine in Charleston, they own a little bar in Paris. And, of course, I'm going to go visit a little bar in Paris. I mean, I think that part of what makes this industry so cool and interesting fun is the people.

26:12And I think the enhancement of the meal or the experience in the restaurant is just that much greater because of the people. Yeah. Well, I mean, let's talk about figuring out what you wanted to say in this book. Sure. So you've got yourself and Jamie and Mikey Files, your creative partner on pretty much all projects. And you've got this word doc that maybe started empty but filled up quite quickly. How do you think about organizing this book and making the number one best Indian cookbook in the world? A book about you but also Tripani, about a lot of different elements of your life, about Parsi cuisine.

26:47So there's a lot of elements to bring into this book. How did you do that? It was a complex book. Sure. Conceptualize. Definitely. Everybody thinks that, oh, well, it's a cookbook. Just put together a bunch of recipes from your restaurant or for your background and you're good to go. Well, first of all, the average restaurant has, what, maybe 20 menu items, 25? Yeah. A cookbook requires 100 recipes. So, you know, it's not just the greatest hits of Chayipani. You've got to dig deep. You've got to go back story. Absolutely. And things that you love and inspired you. So with the book, I was trying to capture a number of things.

27:19First and foremost was sort of the street vibe. I didn't just want to present a recipe in a vacuum. I wanted the recipe to have context. If somebody's even reading it, to sort of hear and smell the streets of Mumbai or my mom's home or that fancy restaurant that we went to. to actually feel it. So a lot of head notes, a lot of context, a lot of explanation for why this recipe exists. I think some of my head notes were longer than the actual recipes in terms of explaining the meaning of this and what this particular dish is. A lot of etymology and sort of a lot of origin stories. Everybody seems to think that, well, that's not a fair statement.

28:02Many people think. Many people, or it's not uncommon or even unreasonable to think that a culture as ancient as India that a cuisine's been pretty locked. As in, it's an evolutionary process, but it stays within a lane. It blows people's minds when I explain to them that Indian cuisine has been influenced more by Europeans than our own history. In fact, modern Indian cuisine today is more a result of European influence than anything that we cooked 2 ,000 years ago. As you all know, the chilies, the potatoes, the tomatoes. So I spent some time talking about that. British, Portuguese, Spanish. French, Dutch.

28:39I mean, shoot, the Greeks, the Romans. There are more Roman coin deposits in India than in most other places of the world. That's incredible. Just showing how much trade was happening between the ancient world and India. So telling those stories is important in the book so that people understand why this dish came to be, especially the street food dishes. And then I think the third part was sort of really trying to convey to someone how I think about food and how I like to cook, which is, you know, if somebody said, well how do you sum it up i said lazy the least amount of work possible efficiency we call that your friend but even the idea of efficiency comes from just wanting to the least amount of work possible i really believe that one of the barriers for people like cooking at home is just how much work yeah it seems like it's so much easier to press a button on a phone and have it delivered.

29:33So trying to create a sort of a sense for someone reading this book, like I can do this. This is easy. And especially it's Indian food. So I've already got that barrier of somebody thinking this is going to be complex and all these layers and I got to have this pantry full of spices. So I start literally with the words, how to think like an Indian cook. And then I say, and how to organize yourself to cook from this book. And then how to shop to cook from this book, but not as in go out there and go bananas, but as in you probably already have everything you need. There's a line in there where I say, if you open my fridge, there's nothing in there to indicate that I'm from India.

30:10Yeah. But I can make you a completely honest Indian meal with everything that's already in the fridge. Is that because of the produce and because of the proteins being very much aligned with what we have? Every cuisine, the fundamental ingredients are the same. Everybody cooks with some sort of meat, some sort of vegetable. They use fire, heat, flame. So when you really think and go, well, what's differentiating a Mexican meal from an Indian meal from a New Orleans meal? It's combination and technique. And maybe the handful of things that differentiated, quote unquote, spices, make up 2 % of the dish.

30:48Yeah, it's true. It's a good point. I think you look at the ingredients of an Indian dish, it's many, many, many familiar ingredients. Yeah, I mean, you take a taco, and you take a cate roll, and you sit there and you're like, what have you got? We got some bread-like round, flat structure. We have chicken. We have cumin. We have cilantro, chilies, some sort of acidity, some sort of salt. So I really want to dispel the notion that cooking Indian food means you got to spend a day in your local little India clearing out the local Patel brothers, stocking up with spices, creating room in your pantry for a whole new set of ingredients.

31:23And so going back to the book, those are the three sort of organizing principles. This is going to be easy. You can do this. You don't need a lot of specialty stuff. Number two is efficiency. It's not going to take a lot of time to do this. And number three is like, you're going to have so much fun doing this. It's going to be, you're going to enjoy the act of cooking this dish at home. Well, let's talk about Vata Pop because that is what you call, quote, the unquestionably the greatest sandwich of all time. Love the fighting words. I've had it. It's absolutely delicious. Yeah. And it's a perfect dish.

31:57Tell me about what goes into it and how you've translated this for the cookbook. Yeah, I mean, that particular genre of street sandwiches, everything with the word pav, wadah pav, kima pav, pav bhaji. I mean, there were so many pavs that we enjoyed in India, all just have this incredible backstory to them. And we've talked about this, how these dishes were invented to feed factory workers. that were coming out of cotton mills in Mumbai where things had gone into overdrive just because of world events and the shortage of cotton, you know, the Civil War and so on, and also the age of industrialization.

32:35So, but the fact that this dish came together using this sort of disparate set of ingredients from literally all over the world, where only at that moment in time could that dish have been invented. So you've got the 1800s, these factories are cranking out cotton, And workers that are normally used to a nine to five schedule where they probably ate breakfast at home. Their lunch was delivered in a tiffin. And then they went home and had dinner again at home are suddenly like, you know, hungry because nobody's delivering a tiffin at 2 a.m. The third shift workers. Exactly. Got to look up them. So you got these enterprising street hawkers that are going like, all right, how do I feed these people?

33:12What do I have handy to put a dish together then? And of the humblest of ingredients, in my opinion, the greatest dish on the planet was formed. So these guys would go to the vegetable markets that had leftovers and pick up tomatoes, potatoes, green chilies, bell peppers, things that are non-perishable in the vegetable kingdom. And spice it up into a beautiful little, just creamy, I mean, my God, just the texture they get on those potatoes. You know, my God, like, you know, Jean-Georges Wong-Victor should be envious of how the texture of the creaminess of those potatoes and perfectly spiced. and then the shatteringly crisp.

33:49That's a difficult one. Yeah, shatteringly is a good one. You got to get it. Crisp chickpea batter. And again, the chickpea batter, the garbanzo bean, chickpea not native to India. We call it Kabuli chana, which tells you where it's from, Kabul, Afghanistan. You know, that comes along. And then the pow, this Portuguese word for bread made by these Jesuit priests in their bakeries in a part of Bombay, probably in Bandra somewhere. And all this comes together in a starch bomb. Yeah, it's like the pow is like the outer layer, and then you've got another starchy layer. And then you've got batter that's also starchy.

34:24But just the textural, that first bite where your teeth sink through that slightly soft, sweet exterior bread that's evoking into a Hawaiian role. And you're thinking of Polynesia and those great traders. And then you crunch through that chickpea batter, and all of a sudden you're in the Middle East, enjoying, you know, like you've got notes of almost hummus-like in your mouth, but crunchy. of falafel-like. And then you bite through that potato and your South America is exploding in your mouth with that creamy potato that just enraptured everybody. And then the spices hit you. The herbaceousness of the cilantro just flooding your senses.

34:59The green chili, the tang of it. And then that garlic chutney. Exactly. That roasted peanut, sun-dried garlic, and red chilies from the plains of Maharashtra just hit you and coat the mouth with that sweetness built into it a little bit, into that. It's a perfect bite. It lights your mountain fire. It's the kind of dish that every bite you take makes you want to take another one. I mean, I think cocaine falls in the category. Not that I've done a lot of that. No, no, no. We've talked about this before. Yeah, yeah. We've talked about it without doing it, of course. Without doing it, yes. We've done it for you here.

35:30I'm saying it is literally a drug-like sandwich. I mean, take us to Puna where we were when we went to the guy. Oh, my lord. And it was monsoon and we were in waiters and it's like, you know, the streets are flowing. and we're at this stall and it's like 2 p.m. and there's a line. There's like a line of like 20 people, I think at that point, even though it was raining. And these guys become legends. Yeah. I mean, this guy, I've, you know, what was the size of a stall? Maybe like... Half of a hot dog cart? Cart, yeah. Half of it. Yeah, and he's got, you know, the scene is amazing because you walk up and you buy a token, right, for how many of these water pots you want.

36:10That's right, right, right. And then you take the token, and then you kind of like just stand there because nothing's happening. And there's people milling around, and you're kind of like, what is going on? And all of a sudden, a basket of hot wadas appear out of nowhere because he's got like a little fryer operation on the back. On the back, yeah. Yeah, and then the hands start flying. I mean, his hands are moving so fast, we couldn't see it. And there's no system. There's no line. You're just thrusting your token at this guy, hoping out of the corner of his eye he takes pity on you and handles it.

36:36But everybody gets their wadas. It's on little pieces of newspaper. you're eating there on the street it's raining steam is just rising off the streets of Puna mixed in with the smell of a city with 5 million people you're shoulder to shoulder with other folks and all of you have this one bond in common in that moment it's the water and then the water buffaloes rolled up we're having the pows and all of a sudden a big herd of buffaloes. And this is like a modern city. Yeah, with a four-lane street. With Wi-Fi and big cars, but all of a sudden, a water buffalo. Yeah, and a BMW's navigating his way through the herd of buffaloes.

37:21It's incredible. And you and Jamie are freaking out, and Mikey and I are looking at you like, that's actually just everyday life. You guys are so chill about so many elements. Well, it's like the street scene of India is, you know, it's like I think with most cultures that are ancient, they've left behind that ancient part and moved forward. And India has moved forward, but it dragged the ancient part along with it. Sure did. And it's right there in the moment, and that's what I love about it. It's a truly singular place. I only spent a week there with you, but outside of a few other places in the world, there's very, very, very, very unique bones and vibes in India that I have not been to since.

38:00It's an incredible place. Incredible. Yeah. It's a remarkable country worth visiting. I don't know if you'll survive it, but yeah. Neat, neat, neat friends. This episode is brought to you by Z-Biotics Pre-Alcohol Probiotic. Hosting a food podcast means I'm invited to a lot of industry dinners, book launches, chef pop-ups, and wine tastings that run four hours longer than planned. And I've noticed which of my friends in the industry handle those nights the best. It's often the ones who come prepared with Z-Biotics Pre-Alcohol. It's the world's first genetically engineered probiotic, and here's how it works.

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40:06Listen to the free audiobook now. All right, direct quote. Non pisses me off. So interesting. I think this is obviously a dish that many know and love, but you have a different opinion. Well, the average, unless you grew up in the Punjab or in Kashmir, you go, you know, anywhere south of that, the average Indian, and the majority of Indians live in the great states of Maharashtra and Bihar and South India, never grew up eating naan. So for me to eat naan, I had to go to a specialty North Indian restaurant, a Punjabi restaurant. And that's where I could have a naan. It was a specialty Adam. And so when you come to America and, you know, when you say to somebody, oh, I'm from India, and they're, oh, my God, I love Indian food.

40:57God, I love naan. It shouldn't piss me off. And it's unfair to be pissed off. You can be pissed off. You can be mad. You can do it. You have it. I completely understand why somebody would equate that. You know, it's like it's not like everybody grows up studying food culture. I mean, you make these broad generalizations, right? But the fact that I have to have naan in my restaurants pisses me off. The fact that I couldn't open back in 2009 an Indian street food restaurant and think I would have a chance of survival unless I put sag paneer, butter chicken, and naan on the menu pissed me off back then and still pisses me off today.

41:38I can get away with taking it off the menu. A lot has changed, man. A lot has changed. in no small part thanks to great chefs, great Indian restaurants, and people understanding sort of Indian regional cuisine. I mean, and that is different. But this is back, I'm going back almost 20 years. I had to open a restaurant that was me trying to tell a very specific story, and yet had to drag fucking naan into the mix just to survive. And thank God for naan, I made it. You know, and naan is still the number one selling menu item, if you count, in Shaipani. More than okra fries, more than SPDP, more than pani puri.

42:13Even today, if you were to do a product mix, even over kale puras, you do a product mix, because it's cheap and it's the bread on the side. So it pisses me off because it's a love-hate relationship. I can't get away from it, and I think the average Indian restaurant will probably still struggle without having something like naan or butter chicken or substitute ubiquitous Indian dish without which you may not succeed commercially. Yeah. And I can't wait for the day where an Indian restaurant can open and say, no fucking naan here. But I put it in the book. At least if I'm writing a cookbook. You've got to have a point of view.

42:49I'm not putting a naan here. Do chefs from Kerala, from Tamil Nadu, do they have a similar opinion as you and they just may be more polite? Well, I'm sure they do. But here's the thing. The chefs from Tamil Nadu and Kerala couldn't open restaurants 20 years ago. Sure. Who would go? Yeah. Right? Now they can. and now they can open restaurants and maybe for some of these young guys they're probably even wondering why is marijuana so worked up? But none. We open restaurants all the time with that. I'm like, motherfuckers, do you have any idea how hard a previous generation had to work for you to get to this point?

43:20Show some respect, young gun. Not only were we working against being in America and a preconceived notion of what eating food, we're getting against our parents that didn't want us to do this in the first place. Yeah, you guys had like double headwinds. It was a lot. I mean, and I'm in that transitional generation where I was able to make the transition over. So, you know, I read somewhere there's actually a generation that was born both in the analog world and the digital world at the same time. They're called, they're born in 1980 in my year. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, they fully remember the landline and they fully remember, you know, they're born in the age of a cell phone.

43:55And I feel that way with Indian cuisine. I fully remember, you know, the strip mall, the buffets, and that's a big part of my life and experience. and also a big part of my life and experience is walking into a restaurant where somebody's from Kochi, and that's the only cuisine they're doing. Which is, I mean, Hyderabody cuisine. Here in New York, there's a chain, like three, they brand it Hyderabody. And that's all they do, and I love that. And that means that just like every other great cuisine in America, Italian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Indians coming into his own. So going back to what we said, I think New York is, yeah, has been the center of the new wave.

44:33But the, this is throwing down the gauntlet here, the South was the beginning of the new wave. You had Manit Chauhan in Nashville. You had Chidi Kumar in Raleigh. You had - Asha Gomez. Asha Gomez in Atlanta. Sonny Baveja in Virginia, Richmond. Marwan Arani in Asheville, North Carolina. Vish Bhatt in Oxford. I mean, he was doing French, but he was still an Indian doing his thing there. And so we started it there, and now then it took off. Ironically then, in New York, San Francisco, L.A., Chicago, you know, the young guns are ascendant. It's so cool, and I know you did a lot of events called Brown in the South, which was a fundraising and just community group.

45:16Sam, four in Lexington. Sorry, had to do the shout out. There's more, and let's unpack that. It's a great point. I'm glad you brought it up. I got to know Asha pretty well, and that's how I met you 14, 15 years ago. And I recognize that Atlanta and Asheville has diaspora living there. Right. And and maybe obviously New York, you go to New Jersey, credible Indian communities there, too. But there is a willingness for the communities in the south to accept this cuisine. I mean, you open Chai Pani in Asheville. I mean, so assess like why the south? Why was that the case when all of these young companies and chefs were doing such great work 10, 15 years ago?

45:58Yeah. It's something I really do spend a lot of time thinking about. We talk about it a fair amount. And there's a lot to unpack there. I mean, I think it's one of those things where, you know, a number of ingredients, again, going back to that metaphor, happen to happen in the right place at the right time. So economically speaking, it was far cheaper to open a restaurant in Asheville, in Lexington. and even Atlanta than in New York. So the commercial forces for or against trying something new and risky, the bar was a little bit lower, right? You're not paying$30 ,000 a month in rent in East Village versus Asheville, North Carolina.

46:34So if things went south, it wasn't going to be the end of the world. Also for immigrants that are looking for new beginnings, the South is and was and probably still is one of the faster-going areas that still needs the labor, needs the communities from around the world to come. Cost of living is cheaper. The traditional immigrant hubs of New York and San Francisco are just gotten too expensive. So people, you know, education, the South has great universities. That's it. I went to the University of South Carolina. Vish went to Mississippi. There's obviously UNC and the entire system there, Duke.

47:13And because of the education system, a great hub of wealthier, upper-class, diasporic Indians whose kids kind of go like, Dad's not going to get mad at me if I go to culinary school. Willingness for the parents. Parents. And kids being born in the South, second-generation kids that are looking now for the restaurant that is in their parents' restaurant. Yeah. So I think all of that came together as sort of this perfect storm somewhere around the 2000s, early 2000s. That led to these groundbreaking Indian restaurants. I think there's a little bit totally cool, by the way, like really, really interesting framing of why this movement happened in the South and not in like the Pacific Northwest or Texas.

47:56And really totally makes sense. You just outlined a dozen shafts. I think it's also in relationship to the ascendance of the South in media. I think that food media in 2005 to 2012 in that window decided that the South was actually worth covering. I know. Decided. And there was so many great chefs of non-Indian heritage getting the press. And then, of course, people started traveling there more and all these amazing your colleagues started discovering you on the national scale. And I can name a bunch of writers who did great work for national publications. Well, let's move on and talk about the the toasty story, because I feel like this is a really good one.

48:41You realize that the American Club sandwich was inferior to the toasty. I'm just quoting you. Oh, my God. I actually said that. Your name is on this book. I'm just looking at my receipts. It's not even a contest, man. You had a toasty in Mumbai. I did. It was great. It's what the club sandwich dreams to be. I mean, where do I even start? First of all, too much bread. What's with that middle layer of toast in the club sandwich? Yeah. Don't get it. Maybe the bread companies maybe had a little bit. Yeah, exactly. Diners. There's extra bread. You don't need the extra bread. The golf courses and diners are like, here, big bread.

49:19And just like this collection of dry ingredients. I mean, the toasty in Mumbai, again, it just speaks to where the number one goal of the street vendor is to stop you in your tracks, grab you by the, you know, sort of the throat, so to speak. Yeah. And have your eyes blow out of their sockets with the deliciousness of the first bite. And it's got to be everything. Temperatures. Yeah. So you've got a sandwich that's got cucumbers inside that was, you know, like in one of those toasty presses being cooked on the outside. Like, what the hell is a cucumber doing in a warm sandwich, right? But it works.

49:57And the potatoes and the eggs and the, you know. So, yeah, like, don't even talk to me. You have this recipe in the book, too. Of course I do. And you got to, you know, and then what's a club sandwich? What are they dipping in? Ketchup? That weak-ass, like, sauce of, like, just tomatoes and sugar? Like, you have some Maggie's Sweet and Saro sauce. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel, yeah, the Maggie sauce is a... Yeah, I mean, it's a nice try for the club sandwich. And I am pretty sure the toasty, I mean, having said that, where did the toasty come from? The British bring in their damn finger sandwiches and, you know, where did the club sandwich come from?

50:29It's a finger sandwich, right? Lots of bread and you don't get your fingers dirty. And the Indian street vendor took one look at this, you know, this sad looking finger sandwich and said, we can do better. And the toasty was born. I love that. Well, I want to talk about Mumbai a little bit more because when we were there, we visited, a number of restaurants, but three came to mind and I wanted you to talk about them. Britannian Company, Elko, Pani Puri Center, and Ayub. Ayub's. Ayub's. Ayub's, man. Yes. All three really stuck with me. There was many more to mention, but the Rippin Club, but it's a private club.

51:03Yeah. Wrote about that from a food and wine story. But tell me about all three of these because I think more people should visit Mumbai. Oh, God. Yes. I mean, I would say Mumbai should be up there with Paris, London, Cairo, Mexico City as one of the great cities to visit. That's because of a food scene. It's a great city. Especially South Mumbai. It's one of the world's great cities. I mean, it's its own flavor. I get it. And it's an acquired taste, some parts of it. But it's still, it's one of the great world cities up there with Tokyo and London and Paris and all these incredible cities I love to visit.

51:40But those three restaurants in particular, all sort of slot under these different aspects of what makes Mumbai Mumbai. So let's start with Britannia. As I've explained in the book, and as you know, I'm a Parsi, and I do spend some time talking about what is a Parsi. Yeah, of course. Right. But culturally, sort of like the Jewish delicatessen in New York City, the Irani Cafe, named after Persians, last name Iranis, there were Zoroastrians that came to Mumbai, opened bakeries and tea shops, and they affectionately came to be known as the Irani Cafes. And it's what Starbucks wants to be today. It's true.

52:22Right? Yeah. A place of where because it's not Hindu, it's not Muslim, it's not Jewish, it's not this, it's not that, it's neutral ground. Yeah. So everybody can come, have a cup of chai, have a sandwich, a little fruit cake, a little pastry, and have some Parsi food. So it's convivial. But it's also a time capsule. And that's what I love about Britannia. There's only 50 ,000 Parsis, more or less, alive in the world. And the ones that are actually practicing and holding on to their culture, probably half of that. So to walk into Britannia is to walk in probably one of the most ancient cultures and religions in the world and to experience it for a moment through the lens of the cuisine of the Parsis and through the lens of their story of this great world religion that spawned literally Christianity and everything that come from that.

53:18Like half of Christian mythology comes from Zoroastrian mythology as in this sort of evolution of religion as it happens. And to see that there on the walls and then to eat the food and to recognize that this is a time capsule and it's fading and it looks like it, I think as important as visiting a museum in Egypt should be going to Britannia Cafe or something like it in Mumbai. It's sacred ground. It's sacred ground and it's not going to be around much longer. Are you going to buy it?

53:52It would be cool. I bring that up. We joked about it. But obviously your connection to Mumbai is strong. You grew up a few hours away. I feel like. if some wild haired dream came true and we were to buy it, it would not be because it makes sense as a commercial enterprise. It would be a complete nostalgia play. It would be to preserve and protect something that I believe is not long for this world. I mean, a Parsi museum of food and culture. Of food, of culture. But a living museum. Exactly. Of culture and food and bring back. I mean, my God, that would be a dream. I mean, absolutely. Would I do it if I could?

54:30Oh, in a heartbeat. Yeah, yeah. Can I? I don't know, Matt. I don't know. I don't know. It's an ambitious goal to do that, to preserve without Disney-fying it, without turning it into some sort of tourist attraction. And a lot of the Irani cafes that are open, modern, including Botiwala, that are an homage to Britannia and cafes like it. I don't want listeners, you know, start jumping to my throat because the food there wasn't actually, it had slipped. Standards have slipped. It's not as good as it used to be. but we were there because of nostalgia because of what it meant but the ones like Botiwala and Dishoom and places like that they're fabulous they're telling their own story but it's an homage it's a cover band you have to have the cover band if you're not in parts of India it feels like always exactly but to be able to have the original still relevant 100 years from now would probably be something important in terms of preserving our culture tell me about Elko oh my god so we went to Elko for the Paniperi And this is again what I love about Mumbai.

55:30Every Mumbai-ker can tell you where to go for the best thing. You want the best parsley food? You're gonna go here. You want the best panipur? You're gonna go there. Arguments. I mean, I'm saying, you know, they probably come to blows over some arguments about where to go. But Elko to me is the best panipur I've ever had in my life. I go there for that. I take everybody for that. I took you there for that. And it's the best experience of panipur I've ever had in my life. You stand in front of the panipur guy. This thing's gotta be made in the moment. It's ephemeral that way. Like it's one of those foods that cannot be made ahead of time.

56:02You cannot wait, and it cannot be eaten in any other setting than another human being handing it to you. Yeah, exactly, by hand. Almost in your mouth, if they could. I've seen it in mouth. I feel like that was part of it. Explain the dish just briefly. Oh, sure. So you've got this little, imagine if a Ritz cracker were to get puffed up into a hollow globe. And it's wheat and semolina flour, so it's, you know, we've used the word shatteringly before. But this actually is literal. So you shatter it by poking a hole in it, and you create like a little opening. And then you stuff. There's a variety of ingredients, but the most common one is potatoes, white peas, maybe some chickpeas, maybe some onion and green chilies.

56:42And then you dunk it, and this is where the magic happens. You dunk it in this sweet tamarind water. We call it mitapani. It's a sweet tamarind chutney, but thin. And then immediately dunk it again in this vibrant, herbaceous, minty water. that's minty and spicy and cold, ice cold. This could also be an argument that someone's going to have with me, like Pani Pri water should not be cold. I'm like, it should absolutely be cold. Elko has it cold? It should be cold. They're the gold standard. And then, as this thing is literally melting in your fingers in the milliseconds it takes before it falls apart, because now you've got a wheat sphere filled with water, you put it in your mouth, crunch, and your mouth explodes with that Pani Pri water.

57:24It's like a wave inside of your mouth. With the potatoes, with the shatteringly crispy chickpea on the outside. I mean, the closest experience you have sort of in a Western context may be an oyster. Yeah. You know, when you slurp it down with the little minionettes and everything. But imagine taking that up texturally at a whole other level. You've got the soft, warm potatoes inside. You've got the chickpeas, but you've got the crunch, and you've got the water and the salinity and the herbaceousness and the mintiness, sweetness. I mean, I literally have seen, you know, almost like a cartoon. the first time I give somebody that's never had one before and they take a bite, their eyes get wide.

57:56And you're afraid to open your mouth because you don't want all that to come gushing out. Yeah, you have to do it in one bite. And then you want it again and again and again. And you can stand there and have 30 of these back to back to back. And it's kind of like, it's an adrenaline hit. I remember meeting you or an early interaction at a food festival where you're doing whatever. And we were handing these out. I remember when you had the first one. I actually remember that, Matt. The end of the wine. You had this look in your face that went like, Okay, my brain is still trying to decipher what just happened in my mouth.

58:24I love that about it. That's delicious. Such a great dish. Ayub's is the last one. I really love this place. I mean, this book could have been called I Dream of Ayub's. I know, I know. I went back there. I was there. I went there twice after you and I went to Ayub's again. So, okay, first of all, the place doesn't open until 5 p.m. Yeah. It's, I mean, the literal definition of a hole in a wall. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you kind of have to stoop a little to get inside. and 99.9 % of the business is to go. They're kind of stunned that you want to sit there and eat the thing. You're better off standing outside eating it than sitting inside.

58:57And it is the greatest kebab, the greatest morsel of meat. Kebab's too generic a word. Morsel. The greatest morsel of meat that I've put in my mouth till today. I've had incredible morsels of meat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a Sikh kebab. And, you know, I think the average American thinks of kebab as a chunk of meat that you put on a skewer and grill, the classic shish kebab. But traditionally, kebab is ground meat, minced meat, spiced just delicately and beautifully. You don't stick just a thin skewer through it. You actually make a very thin sheet of the meat on a fat iron skewer. So the heat from the skewer is cooking the inside and the outside.

59:39It cooks fast and hot and furiously. It's traditionally goat meat or lamb meat or beef. but you want high fat content. And when you slide it off, it comes literally steaming and glistening to the table and you don't want a lot of bread because the delicacy of the meat is going to get lost. You don't put it in a naan like that. That's sacrilegious. So you have the thinnest of rotis, the rumali roti, the handkerchief roti. And it's named that so that when you hold it up to the light, the light should shine through it. That's the sign of a good rumali. So it's wrapped in that. And then the only condiment that makes complete scent is the thinnest of green chutney.

1:00:20Why green? Just a little bit of herbaceousness. You want a little bit of green in your mouth. So there's a little mint, a little green chilies, a little cilantro. And it's in a yogurt base, but a thin yogurt base. Not this tzatziki bullshit that's going to completely make the – I'm going to make everybody pissed off at me. Everybody, not just the Indians. Everybody's going to be pissed off. We're all taken straight. Right. But what I mean by that – you know what I mean? is like the right place for the right thing, man. Yeah, yeah. Don't put a thick yogurt-based condiment on something that delicate.

1:00:47That's like the Queen's version of a kebab. Yeah, and then you take a bite and you've got those macerated onions on the table with lime juice and a little bit of chili powder. I remember the limes going on there, yes. And every, it's one of those bites that just is transcendent. I've had pizza like that. Yeah, yeah. I've had a taco like that. It's that kind of experience, Matt, that you're constantly chasing it for the rest of your life. I am kind of myself. I remember having those, I think we had the lamb, is what I remember most. And you chase it, you know, in your mind. Yeah, it's delicious kebab, and it was a cool experience.

1:01:23So I think you make a great point, Matt. Like, if somebody wanted to experience three different aspects of Mumbai that were street-based, like, you know, casual-based, go to Britannia, go to Elko, go to Britannia and order the, you know, order the Sully chicken, right? With the parsley rotis. Go to Elk for just the pani puri. And then go to Ayub's for the kebabs and guess. Here's what. Do it all in one night. Yeah, yeah. Totally doable. That's the thing about street food. Yeah, do it all night. You obviously can pop around. Get in the car. Low energy, unfocused, foggy, you might be dehydrated.

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1:02:33Listen to the free audiobook now. Want smoother, brighter skin without adding another complicated step to your routine? Try Daily Microfoliant from Dermalogica. This exfoliating powder activates with water to gently polish away dull, flaky skin, leaving it feeling smoother and looking brighter. It's gentle enough to use every day, so keeping your skin looking healthy and fresh is easy. Ready to see the difference? Visit Dermalogica.com and use code SMOOTH at CART for an exclusive gift with your$65 purchase. I want to transition and talk about Spicewala. Yeah. Big, big deal. I mean, it's crazy when I think about two years ago, you're at Fancy Food.

1:03:21I remember even longer, like before the pandemic, right? You were at Fancy Food for the first time. The first time, yeah. So I like saw from a distance, you guys launched this company. And now it's just, it's truly our favorite spice plan. And my wife, Tamar, uses the Italian blend all the time. Last night, she used your new Jougad spice rub, which we'll talk about. You're going to love this. She was cooking with an unnamed Indian lentil Tetra Pak packet. She had some beef and some lentils. And she was like, this needed a little bit more spice from this lentil packet. So she threw some Jougad spice on it.

1:04:00I love that you've been calling it a spice. Wait until people hear what Jougad is. It's hilariously not a spice. So, yeah, we should just go there. Like, Jucata is not a spice. It's your version of what? Well, it was meant to be a joke, right? And the joke was, you know, for April Fool's, we were like, you know, what Spicewell has become really known for our blends. Yeah. You know, I mean, and I really - Italian really is good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And to me, putting blends together, it's like cooking. Like, you're really thinking through the ratio of these things. And then you got to take the blend and add it to food.

1:04:28So I was joking. I was like, you know, at the end of the day, like the single best blend that I ever put on a meal is if it needed a little extra sugar or need a little extra salt or sometimes a little MSG. And I was like, you know what? We should make a blend and call it Jigard. And everybody starts laughing around the table. You would think it's funny as heck. And Jigard is the Indian word for MacGyvering something. And again, you know, for those of you who don't know who MacGyver was, it's a show about this guy that could fix anything, You know, disarm a bomb with just bubble gum and duct tape and some WD-40, right?

1:05:01But it's an ethic in India. It's a version of resourcefulness. Absolutely. Ingenuity, smart, technical savvy. Yeah. I mean, we're a resource-scarce country for most of the population. Yeah. Right? So even as a street vendor, I mean, you don't have a lot of things that can help you put together your dish. So you just got it. Yeah. You figure things out. And we saw so many examples of the craziest shit coming together. Like, how is this even working? But it does. Right? And there are workarounds. So, you know, the American equivalent would be like, you know, with duct tape and WD-40 and some super glue, you can pretty much do anything.

1:05:34So with MSG, sugar and salt, Matt, you can pretty much fix anything. Yeah, yeah. And, but it was also, I was trying to make a, I'm not saying I was, you know, I'm the right person to make the statement. And that's not what this is about. I just also wanted to just put my ass out on the line and say, like, can we start talking about MSG in the right context and in the right way with everything else? It's like, is MSG bad for, yeah, so is sugar, so is salt, in excess, too much of it, so is anything. Anything. Anything, right? MSG is perfectly fine. It's in parmesan cheese, it's in tomatoes, it's in steak, it's in soy sauce.

1:06:09And the rap it's gotten, not just the rap, fear. Yeah. And then that fear translates to, you know, it's insidious. Racism. It's insidious. You know, is there a direct line from not wanting MSG and food to racism? Probably not. but is there a domino effect? Absolutely. You think less of a cuisine or a culture because in your mind you're associated with something. You know, we probably have our own sort of, you know, dog whistles too that, you know, curry, for example, can be both. You know, it can be a celebration and a dog whistle. So I was just like, fuck it, I'll just put my ass on the line, put MSG in a tin.

1:06:44And we were concerned about, you know, we sell, I mean, Spicewalla, a big part of our business is restaurants and chefs. I mean, in fact, that's how we started. We were the company. Yeah, your food service line. We were a food service line. We were by chefs for chefs. And that's how we made our name. And thousands of kitchens across the country use Spicewala every day. And I was concerned that those chefs would think less of us as a company because we introduced something to Spicewala. The outpouring of positivity where chefs were saying, oh, thank God, somebody else besides, you know, a couple of food media voices are talking.

1:07:16But not just talking about it. I'm putting a company on the line, Matt. Yeah, yeah. By putting this in a tin. As in, if this went the wrong way and everybody suddenly said, we're not buying Spice Wall anymore because they use MSG. Yeah. So every now and then, you know, what's that old saying? A principle is not a principle unless it costs you something. True. So what started off as an April Fool's joke has now turned into, like, somebody where there's something to lose should do something to change the conversation. And I have something to lose. I'm like, I'll put it on the line there. That's all it is.

1:07:47I'm not trying to turn this into a grandiose marijuana. and MSG versus the world. I'm just saying, dude, it's a delicious addition in certain circumstances that can make food. I love the element of sugar. I think I've definitely written about a lot about the MSG to salt ratio and giving those two, but adding a little bit of sugar and now having it in the exact ratio that makes sense is really, really cool because I think usually MSG is just sold alone and that's what I have in my kitchen. But now I got Jigar. And I'm putting MSG for a side. Here's a secret of every great kitchen and every chef knows if something needs fixing, either sugar or salt is going to fix a dish.

1:08:25Sometimes both. Truly. And now a little bit of MSG. A little bit of MSG. But the spice company is doing well. I mean, it's growing. And for the record, the MSG is just in. Yeah. The Jogartin. It's not anything else. Every spice. You're the MSG spice company. Just kidding. Don't hit me out there. Just kidding. It was a joke. It's a tin. You don't have to buy it. All the rest of our blends are not going to. If you still have a problem with MSG, don't worry. So I saw it still here for you. This is for the folks that don't have a problem with MSG. So it's called Jogard and it may be my greatest accomplishment.

1:08:59But you like working in spice? I mean, is it a good business? I love the spice business. You know, it's like you're going one, it's, there's chefs that are chefs because they love the farming business. They love farming. They love produce. For me, part of being a chef is I love spices. I love the story of what makes food taste like food. And in particular with spices, I mean, you walk into a warehouse and you wander down the aisles looking at the sacks and you look at the labels and the stamps of the country they came from. It's old school. It's like when you used to collect stamps. Here's the world, oh, this is from Ecuador and this is from Cambodia and this is from Israel and this is from, you know, Lebanon.

1:09:36And it's fun to see how the globe has, how people, humans, have been doing this kind of trade for millennia, well before oil and coffee. Spices were being traded around the world and fortunes were being made in the spice business around the world. So there's something romantic about being in the spice business. I mean, it's not the business, but it's a small piece of it. It's a small piece. I like seeing it in my hungry roux box. I just had to say that. Oh, cool. It's cool seeing your name probably. Yeah, and it's foundational to taste. Yeah, exactly. It's foundational to taste. We could go all day marijuana.

1:10:16I know. I know. I love chatting with you, Matt, because you're such a good conversationalist. You know so much about food. You're a buddy. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining This Is Taste. Oh, well, thanks for having me. I hope this podcast goes far and wide. It is. And it helps me sell a lot of books. No international incidents. Let's not make no mistake about it, folks. I'm here because we're trying to sell a book. Buy the book. It is the number one greatest Indian cookbook of the world. Link in show notes. Yeah. Buy the book. Buy the book. I mean, I'm not one given to patting myself on the shoulder or tooting my own horn.

1:10:48At least I don't think some other people might. It's great. But I will say something. I really do honestly believe that I've given this book my best shot at demystifying the complexity of Indian food, making it fun and making it delicious. And if you've never even thought for once in your life that you could cook Indian food, much less a warrapa, just give it a shot. And if you don't like it, send it back to me. I'll send you a lifetime's worth of free warrapa gift cards. We'll put that as a poll quote. Thanks, Marwan. Thanks, Matt. I appreciate it, man.

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