Dhaba Dhaba

Its truly an experience to eat at the highway road-side dhabas. I am not talking about the hybrid and the fake varieties that you find just on the outskirts with the huts and all. I am talking real stuff. The original crude form dhabas.
My first experience of Dhaba was around 12 years back on the highway between Nasik and Shirdi. I was totally amused to see the small set up with a earthen oven on one side and a small kitchen. We had to sit on coir woven cots with a wooden plank in between which serves as the table. And the food arrives in a thali...two rotis, an onion and a green chilli. Had never seen anything like that before in my life! Then the curries come along in small oval shaped bowls. Seeing the puzzled look on our faces, one of the other customers (lorry driver) showed us what to do with the onion...just give one good bang with your wrist and it would break open. Then enjoy the roti with onion and mirchi. I couldn't do that though...but the entire thing was so amusing.
With a few more road trips I had gotten accustomed to Dhaba eating.
One other Dhaba that I particularly remember is on the Delhi-Jaipur highway. The food was heavenly. The Dhaba guy was very friendly and seeing that we really enjoyed his achar, he packed a big dabba of that achar and handed it over to us while paying the bill. It was so sweet of him :)
Well I don't have any digital pics of those Dhabas, but the memories are intact.


In the past 5 years I had no chance of enjoying a good dhaba until recently when I caught a small nice Dhaba on the highway somewhere between Tiptur and Gubbi. It was almost on par with the authentic dhabas that I talked about. Quite a modest one. Infact here I entertained myself looking at 4-5 people doing their assigned duties for the evening...one was peeling and cleaning the onions, the other was chopping them, another one was cutting the bhindi. The one thing that made me widen my eyes was a person chopping green chillies- A huuuuge heap of cut green chillies(forgot to take a pic). Gosh, thats my hell. Ofcourse I was hit by it in the food too ;). All these guys were really enjoying their work while the music played from a stereo from behind. Ah what a sight!

When the food arrived, I could'nt help appreciating the attempt they made in decorating the salad with an inverted cut lemon :)...quite creative! The taste of the dishes was yummy...the smoke flavour that I love enhanced the taste even more.




Once in a while it's fun to forget about hygene and stuff and go back to the basics and enjoy...isn't it?


He he, I know. I was just trying to enjoy the food the way its supposed to be :)

posted by Tweety @ 12:28 PM