A Road Rage To Give In To

aneer pakodas are unfussy things to make: cubes of cottage cheese dipped in gramflour batter, deep-fried and served piping hot with fresh mint chutney. And yet, for fans, the search for the perfect paneer pakoda is like the quest for the holy grail. They will travel miles for it. In fact, they do. One of the most venerated shrines to this honest north Indian snack is on a highway, in Modinagar, about 40 km from Delhi. Devotees flock to this eatery with the no-nonsense name Jain Shikanji, to eat their pakodas (Rs 30 for 100 gm) perfectly crisp and crunchy on the outside and buttery soft inside, washed down with tangy shikanji or lemonade. “Anyone who’s ever driven on NH-58 has to know Jain Shikanji,” declares Meerut-based clinical psychologist Seema Sharma, who’s been coming here for 20 years.

NH-58 is not the only highway with a menu card. India’s longest and oldest— NH-1, better known as the GT Road—boasts its own. In fact, it’s a dhaba-dotted road to foodie heaven. At a famous pitstop here which goes by the lumbering name of Murthal, it’s dhabas as far as the eye can see—Gulshan, Sukhdev, Ahuja No. 1, Pehelwan, Neelkanth, Jhilmil.... Delhiites show up here for weekend brunches of aloo-pyaaz parantha served with mounds of white butter and downed with watery, salted chatte ki lassi; nris landing in Delhi and making their way to Punjab reflexively stop here en route. Fights have broken out, so goes the legend, over which Murthal dhaba to patronise.

If the north has Murthal, the south has Bannur. About 25 km from Mysore, on the state highway, the town is best known for a nameless food joint that serves possibly the tastiest lamb south of the Vindhyas. Similarly, the highways around Coimbatore are justly famous for their eateries (recognised by huge tawas in the front) specialising in the Kuthu parotta, where the layered bread is shredded with artful abandon and mixed with mutton, chicken, prawn or what you will. Kerala highways offer not just toddy, but sitdown meals, complete with rasam, fish fry and red rice, for as little as Rs 10, while in Andhra Pradesh you can feast on small portions of six to seven different styles of biriyani in ubiquitous roadside messes.

Highway food is no longer just trucker fare, but a culinary category of its own—as diverse, delicious and dynamic as its cousin, urban street food. For its ardent fans, journeys are always more important than arrivals. They can wax eloquent for hours about the tea at Sher Bibi on NH-1 near Srinagar, or the time they stopped at Khajuriah in Peerah, best known for rajma-chawal. Others will swear by the Chilika Dhaba on NH-5 near Chilika Lake, which arguably serves the best sea-food, or Rosogollas by the Road on NH-5 near Cuttack, or the vada pavs “to die for” at Vade Wale Joshi on NH-4 outside Pune.

Karnal Haveli on the Delhi-Chandigarh stretch of NH-1. (Photograph by Tribhuvan Tiwari)

Every region has its distinct tradition. The dhaba culture, with dal-sabzi-roti fare, dominates the north. The roads in the south are dotted by small, hole-in-the-wall eateries with tiny tables and school-like benches laid across little rooms, serving local “meals”. However, the cuisine seems to change every 250 km, aficionados are quick to point out. “If you’re on the road for an entire day, you can have a different food experience for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” says foodie Harish Bijoor, ceo of Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.

Many highway legends have grown from modest beginnings. Jain Shikanji, for instance, began life as a small paan shop in 1957, popular with Muslim mechanics from Meerut, who travelled to procure spare parts from Delhi. “They were our first loyal customers,” says co-owner Satish Kumar Jain. Now the clientele includes Amitabh Bachchan, Uma Bharati, Arun Jaitley and Dara Singh who, you are told, can down three glasses of shikanji at a go. The business, run jointly by five brothers, now includes two shops, with a turnover of several lakhs of rupees. The ultimate compliment: many fake Jain Shikanjis have popped up on the route.

Dispelling the illusion that highway food needs grime as an essential ingredient, Jain Shikanji’s owners are self-confessed quality control fanatics, producing the soft paneer in their own dairy, and using clean water from their own reverse osmosis plant. “We use the best ingredients and branded products,” says co-owner Sugandh Jain. For those who want it even fancier, highway food can embrace fine dining too. For example, the Haveli off NH-1 near Karnal, a Punjabi theme resort, with a turnover of Rs 15 crore a year, offers good dhaba-style food in an upscale environment.

The highways are changing in other ways too. McDonald’s and Cafe Coffee Day, mushrooming everywhere, are squeezing out small shops. Sanitised Chinese fare is competing with local and regional cuisine. The sheer diversity of Indian food, kept alive by the tiny shops, is at risk, warns Bijoor, whose company’s food survey across India found that 69,700 kinds of traditional food have been reduced to 21,000, as of 2010.

Also playing spoiler, in their own way, are the fancy new highways. Ramakant’s batata wada joint in Khopoli on the old Bombay-Pune highway is inaccessible from the new expressway and for many, this has taken the fun out of the drive. Hotel Umiya Annapurna Kathiawad on NH-8 in Anand (famous for traditional woodfired meals of bhakri, rotla, gatta and lasooni aloo) has also been bypassed, thanks to a new expressway. Time for highway food fans to fight for its rights?