HYDERABAD: Recently at a Maharashtrian Food Festival hosted by Sheraton Hyderabad, I was talking to Chef Sandeep Sahare from JW Marriott Pune, who was in the city to curate the promotion. During the discussion, he pointed out that if there is one dish which can represent Maharashtrian street food it should be Misal Pav.
Even though Vada Pav has become well-known because of its popularity in and around Mumbai, Misal Pav has a much wider appeal all over the state. It is a healthy snack that is preferred for breakfast but can be eaten any time of the day and comes with the right balance of protein, carbohydrate and nutrients. A few years back, Foodie Hub Global Awards in London named this dish as “The World’s Tastiest Vegetarian Dish”.
Misal Pav is a complete balanced dish all by itself. Misal is a curry made from lentils, while the pav is the popular bread from Maharashtra. The taste of the curry is further bolstered by topping it with chopped onions, a dash of lime, coriander leaves, and farsan. The misal usually uses mainly matki or moth beans but some recipes use mung and a combination of different sprouts. The dish tastes delicious with the pav soaking up the usual and the tarri. As per food and travel enthusiast Shagun Segan, misal pav from many regions of Maharashtra has diverse characteristics with the composition and spices for the curry different from place to place. In Kolhapur, bread is often used instead of pav, and the onion garlic-based masala is fiery. The slightly sweeter Pune dish often has a sev chewer topping while in Nashik, the gravy is black in colour and high on pepper.
Every Maharashtrian city like Pune, Nashik, Kolhapur, and Mumbai has its own sets of favourite outlets for the dish. In our own Hyderabad, a few places serve some good misal pav too. Marathi Katta, an authentic Maharashtrian restaurant in Kachiguda lists misal pav as their top-selling item. Ambarish Lahankar, one of the owners says that the masala for the misal here is specially procured from Kolhapur. However, the authentic laadi pav, which is used in Maharashtra is hard to get in Hyderabad, and the restaurant has to do with a slightly sweeter local pav. The misal has matki, mung, chana, and peanuts and is topped with farsan. They prefer to serve the Kolhapuri version rather than the sweeter Puneri one. Ohri’s Chowpatti at Banjara Hills and Goli Vada Pav in Kondapur are some more places to visit for this delicious dish.
Sabyasachi is a food enthusiast and blogs at www.foodaholix.in