Aurangabad’s most happening “Eat Street”
The city of Aurangabad doesn’t seem to have caved into need of modernism (at least the parts where I’ve seen). Throughout the city, run down buildings, statues and gates, some fenced, to prevent public disfigurement, reminisce of Aurangzeb and his Mughal aura.
Buddi Lane is a great place to be during Iftar. Though a word of caution to the faint hearted and weak stomached .
The bustling lanes filled with street vendors stooped over huge steaming pots burning on coal or sitting high on elevated platforms at charcoal grills slathering food in paper or plastic bags shoving it into the eager hands of religious men and curious ones.
Haleem is everywhere, where you see Harisah, well, that’s Haleem too. The cauldron with bubbling thick stew is an amalgam of wheat paste, barley, lentils (bengal gram) and ground meat (usually lamb or beef). The meat is cooked into a korma, then mixed with the other ingredients which are already soaked overnight. Its all brought together and cooked for a good six hours before being dished out in flimsy foil containers for a meagre Rs. 20
Scotch egg has an Indian cousin and he’s as interesting. The boiled egg was tightly wrapped in spicy beef mince, given a generous egg wash and then plunged into a steaming kadai of oil. Samosas, spiced chicken on sticks, flat egg washed cutlets, chicken— Deep Fried all the way!
The Shawarama was carved from a deliciously cooked rotisserie of chicken and skillfully laid out on a almost transparent bread (which looked like a roomali roti) generous amounts of chicken piled over slathered with garlic mayo and filled in with pickled vegetables.
Roti is what everyone calls the disc size and smaller flatbreads, fresh baked from the bakery down the road. To wash things down Falooda is served up in all the colours possible loaded with dry fruits, vermicelli and sabza.
If you are not a “on-the-go” eater, small restaurants do serve the same street eats in more sturdier crockery. Beef biryani, tava parathas (atleast 2 cm thick), tava ghost, ghost Irani are a tiny part of the never ending menus’.
Dessert can be found in a bright orange tava sprinkled with dry fruits and other edible coloured shavings, which is served in deep fried dough. The poori is made from whole wheat, refined flour and mawa or khoya (milk solids) and is rolled into a 0.5 metre radius disk of about a centimeter thick. Its then deep fried as a whole and broken into pieces when served with the halwa.
Dates in fresh form and dry are sold by the cartful.
If all the heavy meats and gallons of oil scare you, rest assured, fruit is available everywhere.