You must try this tikki chaat,” my cousin insisted on my recent visit to Jalandhar in Punjab. Not being a big fan of aloo tikki chaat, I resisted—but then, can one ever win in front of the overwhelming Punjabi hospitality? I had no option but to cave in. But before I get into how that tikki was, let me tell you why I don’t enjoy eating aloo tikki, which is usually a favourite among everyone.
Growing up in Dehradun, I was a regular at Ajanta Sweet Shop on Kaulagarh Road, where my grandfather would take me once a week for a treat of chaat. We would walk down the long roads of our gated colony and make an exit at the bustling market where the chaatwalahs would take over and add a touch of excitement to the evenings with their flavourful chaats.
As a kid, I loved eating aloo ki tikki with chilled sweetened curd and meethi chutney. The chaatwalah would sprinkle a wee bit of red chilli powder and roasted jeera powder to give my dish the same feeling as that of an adult’s order. Aah, the little innocent joys of life! But coming back to the tikki, what I used to enjoy the most about it was that it used to be chunky with a filling of chana dal and an outside coating of mashed potatoes. This little surprise filling of the chana dal was the norm in terms of how the tikki was made in Dehradun, across most chaatwalahs. The coarse dal adds a bite to the otherwise ‘crispy from outside and soft on inside’ tikki.
On moving to Assam and later to Mumbai, the concept of aloo-tikki chaat disappeared from my life and became a novelty that I could enjoy only during my summer holidays at my grandparents’ place in Delhi and Punjab.
The reason I began to resist aloo-tikki in Delhi NCR is because of how thin and over-crisped they’re made. When one digs into the tikki after unearthing it from the heap of sweetened curd, radish and beetroot slaw, one has to be careful to not hurt the person standing next to you, lest the over-crisp-hard-to-break tikki goes flying onto their face! So, for the safety of others and my own sanity, I stopped eating aloo-tikki chaat completely and stuck to golgappe.
But after what seemed like an eternity and much resistance, I tasted the tikki that my cousin got for me from Agarwal Chaat House in Adampur, a small town in Jalandhar district. The first bite into that chunky tikki was a sign of a well-made tikki as my spoon just cut through it like butter, and tasting it was like taking a delicious ride into a distant past of my childhood. The tikki was topped with a spoonful of sweetened curd, meethi chutney, dhaniya chutney, roasted jeera powder and red chilli powder. The best part though was finding that chana dal mixture inside!
Hooked once again to tikki, I was curious to know about the places that Delhi’s food lovers count on for the simple aloo tikki chaat.
Gurpreet Singh Tikku, a well-known food influencer excitedly shared, “I love that tikki chaat at Sindhi Corner in Karol Bagh. First of all their tikki is shaped like a heart, unlike the usual round-shaped ones, and secondly, they are crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. I have been eating from there for almost forty years now.”
“The tikki we get in Delhi now is filled with arrowroot powder. About 30 years ago I used to eat tikki near my home and I have not tasted anything similar to that for many years,” shared Niti Taneja of Punjabi Bagh. While all of this may seem quixotic to many, and still others may find this to be much ado over a humble tikki, what you’ll find across all of Delhi (especially its older settlements) are pockets and communities that take their snack and its traditions with immense seriousness.
You’d find the same passion in Agra, Lucknow, Varanasi, Kolkata, and even Hyderabad — and in many ways, sticklers for tradition when it comes to food also help in preserving how a dish is either retained or evolves over time.In my case, the simple, soft texture of the very humble tikki brought back many memories and convinced me of its joy for many around.
Vernika Awal
is a food writer who is known for her research-based articles through her blog ‘Delectable Reveries’
(The writer’s views are personal)