Indian-Pakistani Breakfast on Devon Avenue

Hi,

In early July, Jygach and I met for breakfast on Devon Avenue. At 10:30 am, the street was not yet packed with cars.

We started on the east at Hyderabad House for their Saturday special of Hyderabadi Nihari served with Chapati and Paratha.



Generally, nihari is a very spicy dish made with beef shanks cooked for many hours. This nihari was pale in color and very mild and did not appear to have been cooked for too long as it lacked the viscous quality of a good nihari. The lamb tongues in the nihari were served whole and unskinned.



I proceeded to skin the tongue. The owner came by to remark some customers eat tongue with skin, though he he liked his tongue skin off.



We order Sweet Lassi, which jygach thought was another unusual take. This appeared to be a combination of falooda and lassi. The sweet lassi yogurt mixture was enhanced with Sharbat Rooh Afza (a typical Pakistani sweet rose-flavored syrup) and a scoop of ice cream.



Our second stop was Tahoora for their weekend special of Halwa Puri:



There were three puris per order served with (clockwise from top left): Chana Masala (chick pea curry), Aloo (spiced potatoes), Halwa (sweet semolina dessert), Raita (cucumber and yogurt sauce) and Achaar (pickles)

At jygach's suggestion, we added a beef samosa:



Our third stop was Kamdar Plaza for Bhel Puri.



This was poorly made bhel puri because too much sauce was added by the assembler. It was so wet there was very little crispness left.

Our fourth stop was Argo Georgian Bakery for Khachapuri. No pictures because this was eaten as we drove toward home.

There's a few things we have not tried, so we will back on our mission sometime soon.

Argo Georgian Bakery
2812 West Devon Avenue,
Chicago, IL 60659
(773) 764-6322

Hyderabad House
2226 West Devon Avenue
Chicago, IL 60659-2107

Kamdar Plaza
2646 West Devon Avenue
Chicago, IL 60659-1811
(773) 338-8100
http://www.kamdarplaza.com

Tahoora Sweets & Bakery
2345 West Devon Avenue
Chicago, IL 60659-2012
(773) 743-7272
http://www.tahoora.com

Regards,

I live mere inches away from Devon, yet I can't recall the last time I enjoyed an Indo-Pak breakfast. For shame. I might have to indulge this weekend.

(Text written by jygach, images by Cathy2)

Cathy called and said she would pick me up around six in morning on Saturday and we would head to Devon for breakfast. Thus began another one of our food adventures.

With no traffic, we reached Devon in record time and parking was not an issue at all. The downside, Devon restaurants do not believe in early morning breakfasts. Determined to make the best of things, we headed to Ghareeb Nawaz , which is a 24/7 operation. My last visit to this place was about seven years ago and at that time it was a rather dingy and dark restaurant. Things have, however, been spiffed up and now it looks like many of the other modernized restaurants on Devon which can generally be described as clean and functional, but lacking in character. The one interesting component was a small prayer room in the back of the restaurant.

The menu offerings available at this early hour were somewhat limited. From the limited options available, we ordered:

Beef Nihari


1-23-11-006 Beef Nihari by cal222, on Flickr

This does not compare to the excellent nihari at Sabri Nihari, but for $2.99 this was a perfectly adequate plate of nihari which was served with lemon and sliced onions, but no ginger or chopped green chillies.

Chicken Haleem


1-23-11-005 Chicken Haleem by cal222, on Flickr

Haleem is a dish made with wheat, lentils, meat and spices which are cooked for a long period of time until they acquire a think stew-like consistency. The haleem here was relatively spicy and not as greasy as other versions of this dish. This to was served with lemon and opinions, but was missing a key component to a good haleem – crispy, fried onion slices.

Keema Paratha


1-23-11-001 Keema Paratha by cal222, on Flickr

I assumed this would be a paratha stuffed with keema. Instead, we received a paratha with keema on the side. Not something I would bother ordering again.


1-23-11-009web by cal222, on Flickr

All-in-all, for about $12 we had a pretty satisfying start to our morning.

Next stop Levinson’s. Here I purchased egg kichel and a piece of poppy-seed pastry. I love their sugar-coated kichel and I’m not sure I have seen them in any other bakery.

Then to Taza Bakery
There have been a number of comments about this bakery. We ordered one spinach pie which they heated up for us in the oven. This was indeed a more sour version than others I have tasted and very flavorful. We added a few cookies to our nosh including date mamoun and a flat sesame-coated crisp cookie (did not get a name) which I thought was absolutely delicious. The Tandor bread was outstanding and is, in my opinion, what a good naan should taste like. We purchased ours as it came straight out of the tandoor. Chewy, crispy, salty this would have been the perfect (and traditional) scoop for our nihari. At $2.00 for four, this bread is superb and heats up well. I wish I had purchased more.

Appetites were flagging at this point, but we wanted to try two more places. Georgian Bakery. Unfortunately, although open, the place looked dark with no observable baking activity. Off to Tahoora for their Halwa Poori breakfast special. Out-of-luck again as this place opens at 10.

Ghareeb Nawaz Restaurant
2032 W Devon Ave
(between Seeley Ave & Hoyne Ave)
Chicago, IL 60659
(773) 761-5300

Levinson's Bakery
2856 W Devon Ave
(between Francisco Ave & Mozart St)
Chicago, IL 60659
(773) 761-3174

Taza Bakery Inc
3100 W Devon Ave
Chicago, IL 60659
(773) 942-7541

Great adventures; thanks for bumping the August post as well.

There is no finer chaat for me than bhel puri - I'm addicted, occasionally make my own at home (often wish I had more time to make scratch chutneys, but Patel Bros. outfits me reasonably fine), and stopped at the Taste twice a few years ago when a stand had it. The Kamdar Plaza version looks overdressed but otherwise fine. Have either of you found a fully satisfactory version on Devon or in the city? Does anyplace have a signature take on it with unusual ingredients?

I'm merely a journeyman chaat eater, but I've always enjoyed the bhel puri at Sukhadia's. Also, the samosa chaat, which my husband always refers to as an "Indian seven-layer burrito" but eats regardless.

Sukhadia's
2559 W Devon Ave
Chicago, IL 60659
(773) 338-5400

I'm currently having a "You know you're an lth'er" moment. I have never even had bhel or pani puri, but ever since I saw Bourdain having those snacks at the cricket game, and also that episode of Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie filmed in Jackson Heights, NY, I have been mildly dying to go for a Devon stroll for multiple samplings. Something tells me that you're not gonna get good snacky stuff at the sit down restaurants I've been going to out in suburbia, but I'd bet some of the Devon haunts could deliver some decent renditions. I'm all "eyes" for suggestions like Santander. I smell a warmer day Devon Puri-Thon followed by a full blown feast somewhere in my future.

I think this calls for another Devon-a-Thon.

Hi,

The very best bhel puri I ever had was my first one, which coincided with my first visit to Devon AVenue. My neighbor in Moscow had a daughter in Chicago. She raved about Devon, though I had no idea what she was talking about. When we both were in Chicago, we visited together with her cook. He supervised how the kitchen prepared it for us at the snack shop.

The bhel puri last summer was definitely over-sauced. It was an Indian who made it, too. It was already soggy before I took one bite.

A bit irked by this, I bought a bag of bhel puri premixed cereals (sev, puffed rice) and papadi crisps plus a premixed jar of sauce with the tamarind-date and green chutneys (you can buy these separately and mix to taste, too). At home, I boiled and diced potatoes, chopped onions and cilantro. I will admit my first time out, I used too much sauce, too.

A few months later I bought all the ingredients again, this time I questioned other shoppers on how much sauce to use. If I used half a bag, maybe two tablespoons of chutney would be enough.

Uru Swati serves bhel puri, though it is expensive by street food standards.

***

Ghareeb Nawaz does serve Halwa Poori breakfast beginning at 9 am.

Regards,

Me, I'm a papri (or papdi) chaat man, myself. Although I recently had another version whose name escapes me at the moment from Uru-Swati that I liked a lot.

Thanks to Jyoti and Cathy2 for the reports and pictures; looks well worth emulating!

Can't imagine facing lamb tongue for breakfast or for that matter at any time. Perhaps next time you might want to try the masala dosa or the vada for breakfast at a south indian veg restaurant. These are typically served in the morning or for snacks. Yum.

toria,

When they said tongue, we expected chopped up meat. When I lifted this lamb tongue from the murky depths of sauce, it was a stunning surprise. Just as surprising was finding we needed to strip the tongue of its skin.

They joys of breakfast beyond your cultural norms!

Regards,

Cathy, did it taste good? It did not look too appetizing from your pic....more like "grey meat...disgusting....."in my book. Somehow my stomach can't take the sight of the meat and stew like foods and curries for breakfast. Even the chicken stew with idlis my mother in law made were not welcome at that time of day. I was longing for something on the sweet side or at least a masala dosa which I could eat any time of the day, every day.

toria wrote: Somehow my stomach can't take the sight of the meat and stew like foods and curries for breakfast.

To each her own, but in my book, a bowl of steaming beef shank in gravy, garnished with marrow and kissed with a slick of rendered beef fat (a.k.a. nalli nihari), is breakfast par excellence.

Hi,

The only aspect of Indian food (or Thai or Szechuan or Mexican ...) is when the heat level is higher than my tolerance. Granted my tolerance is higher than it once was, which makes life a bit easier.

Savory at breakfast is more welcome to me than sweet. I have been known to eat leftovers from dinner and skipping cereals.

Ever so slightly off putting was a whole lamb tongue with skin as I really expect chunks. Very little was left after we dined or it came home with me.

Regards,

Habibi wrote:

toria wrote: Somehow my stomach can't take the sight of the meat and stew like foods and curries for breakfast.

To each her own, but in my book, a bowl of steaming beef shank in gravy, garnished with marrow and kissed with a slick of rendered beef fat (a.k.a. nalli nihari), is breakfast par excellence.

Indeed,

Santander wrote:Great adventures; thanks for bumping the August post as well.

There is no finer chaat for me than bhel puri - I'm addicted, occasionally make my own at home (often wish I had more time to make scratch chutneys, but Patel Bros. outfits me reasonably fine), and stopped at the Taste twice a few years ago when a stand had it. The Kamdar Plaza version looks overdressed but otherwise fine. Have either of you found a fully satisfactory version on Devon or in the city? Does anyplace have a signature take on it with unusual ingredients?

Sadly, I have yet to taste a plate of chaat that comes close to what is available on the streets in India, but remain committed to looking. There are a couple of places I have spotted in Niles which seem to focus on chat which I am hoping to try soon.

I don't know about "unusual" ingredients for the bhel, but certainly in Mumbai every street vendor has some distinguishing additions such as finely sliced raw green mangoes, boiled peanuts, etc. Also very popular is "dry bhel" which is the sev, the puffed rice, and crushed poories mixed with a dry green or red chutney.

Habibi wrote:

toria wrote: Somehow my stomach can't take the sight of the meat and stew like foods and curries for breakfast.

To each her own, but in my book, a bowl of steaming beef shank in gravy, garnished with marrow and kissed with a slick of rendered beef fat (a.k.a. nalli nihari), is breakfast par excellence.

It is indeed spectacular - when made right (as it is at Noor Mohammadi in Bombay, India), it is the Food of the Gods, one of the greatest breakfasts anywhere (combined with spicy kheema and fresh naans). That is, however, not an experience that can be replicated in Chicago IMHO.

The one referred to above is nalli-nehari - upper-thigh of a buffalo, slow-cooked for 12 hours every day, with beef, fat and bone-marrow.. awesome. On Devon you dont actually get nalli-nehari at all.. you get just plain nehari (minus the bone-marrrow), and its only partially slow-cooked (maybe a couple of hours at most, rather than Noor Mohammadi's usual 12 - NM cooks it from 6pm to 6am every single day of the year). It also, of course, isnt buffalo-thigh-meat either - just a normal cut of beef. (At places like Hyderabad House you sometimes get zabaan-nehari - ie tongue-nehari. A whole different ballgame).

The best versions of normal-nehari are available at a few places on Devon - opinions vary. Sabri Nehari, Usmaniya, Lahore Place.. they all have their backers. But all these neharis, while good, are not cooked longer than a couple of hours, and are not nalli-nehari... and none of them are available for breakfast (Lahore is a 5pm-1am or so spot IIRC, the other 2 are lunch-and-dinner restaurants). The 24-hour spots (Hyderabad House, Ghareeb Nawaz et al, ie the only ones at which breakfast is possible) have generally second-tier-Chicago-neharis IMHO.


c8w

toria wrote:Can't imagine facing lamb tongue for breakfast or for that matter at any time. Perhaps next time you might want to try the masala dosa or the vada for breakfast at a south indian veg restaurant. These are typically served in the morning or for snacks. Yum.

Iam not sure zabaan-nehari (ie tongue-nehari) *is* that much of a breakfast food.. though I havent really eaten it, so I shouldnt comment...

Masala-dosa's, vada's and idli's very much can be breakfast food, especially so in India. In Chicago, however, that is another experience that isnt possible in a restaurant.. because no "South Indian" restaurant that serves the above, as far as I know, is actually open early morning! Most open only for lunch, maybe by 11:30 on weekends (so a lateish "brunch" is all one can do with it, I suppose). The only real "open for breakfast" Indian/Pakistani restaurants in Chicago are the cabbie joints, that serve mostly meat-oriented food (and, on weekends, Tahoora and King Sweets open by 9am to serve their very popular halwa-puri-breakfasts).

Actually, come to think of it, the last time I was at Daata Durbar (I think, it may have been Hyderabad House)... I do seem to recall a new sign claiming a few (atypical for them) things were being offered for breakfast.. for some reason I think Upma might have been one of them (maybe idlis too, but I wouldnt swear to it).. I'll try and ask around the next time Iam there...

c8w

jygach wrote:Sadly, I have yet to taste a plate of chaat that comes close to what is available on the streets in India, but remain committed to looking. There are a couple of places I have spotted in Niles which seem to focus on chat which I am hoping to try soon.
I don't know about "unusual" ingredients for the bhel, but certainly in Mumbai every street vendor has some distinguishing additions such as finely sliced raw green mangoes, boiled peanuts, etc. Also very popular is "dry bhel" which is the sev, the puffed rice, and crushed poories mixed with a dry green or red chutney.

Indeed, sliced raw green mangoes are a very regular feature in Bombay Bhelpuris! (In an old article, 40 foods we cant live without in Bombay, Bhelpuri was described as follows:

-----
Bhel puri
The most commonly sold chaat on the streets of Mumbai, every bhel walla will have his own matchless blend and a considerable 7pm fan following. While the ingredients -- puffed rice, papadi (small crisp deep fried flour puris), sev, onions, potatoes, raw mango and sweet and sour chutney -- remain the same, it is the proportions in which they are thrown together on the street side that makes the difference.
Bhel puri is available everywhere. The stalls at Chowpatty and Juhu beaches draw throngs of die-hard fans. But if you want a bhel puri with ambience, try it at Sea Lounge, Taj Mahal Hotel, Apollo Bunder.
----
Ignore the last sentence, and thats a pretty good synopsis. And, as the article notes, "bhelwallas have a 7pm following" - ie it is a snack-food, usually an evening-snack-food.. almost never consumed for breakfast IMHO.

There are a couple of spots in Niles - Bombay Chaat House (in the same stripmall as the movie-theater that shows Indian movies) is a nice place.. but Ive never tried their Bhel, just their spicy-mixes (which are pretty good).

Sukhadia has a decent version too. But, really, Kamdar is generally considered to have one of the best Bhelpuris in town.. I havent been in a while, but it didnt used to be oversauced as it appeared in the picture. Maybe it was just an off-day? (A special "dont oversauce it you bastards!" instruction might work well too

An old Bombayite friend who has since moved to the Bay Area still misses the BhelPuri from Kamdar - claiming it was closer to the Bombay-version of Bhel than anything to be found there. They do claim, however, that the Bay Area version of Paani-puri is superior to any paani-puri to be found in Chicago.

c8w

Cathy2 wrote:The bhel puri last summer was definitely over-sauced. It was an Indian who made it, too. It was already soggy before I took one bite.

BTW, Cath, though you may have missed out on the crispness factor of the bhelpuri... the "wet-bhelpuri" is a valid authentic style too, popular among some Indians. Bhels are usually customized by the client - you order the bhelwalla to do what you want him to do, most times

One of my old favourite Bombay authors was this guy who went by the name of Busybee - he wrote a lot about food and restaurants in Bombay too. He once wrote of his own favourite bhelpuris from Chowpatty (the beach in Bombay that has iconic bhelpuri, paani-puri and kulfi stalls)...

-------------
Different people like their bhel differently. I like mine wet, very wet. "Bhaiya, chutney aur choro." And since I cannot decide whether I like it hot or sweet, I have loads of both the green chilli chutney and the brown gur and dates chutney. Having the bhel wet is known as 'gilla'. The bhel itself is sev, kurmuras, chopped chillies, tomatoes, onions, some turmeric, some hing, a little boiled potato, mixed together by hands. Hands are important. The bhelwalla mixes it with his hands and you eat it with your hands. Spoons make it taste like the bhel at Shamiana, something prepared with a food processor, cooked in a microwave oven, and served in Dilip Doshi's fancy china.
-------
(The Shamiana=a 24-hour restaurant in the high-falutin Taj Mahal hotel in Bombay... meant for dropping in at 2am on a Saturday night, having a cappuchino and people-watching, not meant for eating quality bhel-puri

c8w

Hi,

That is very interesting. It wasn't a slip up but rather a style.

I now know I am in the dry category. When I eat Rice Krispies or Corn Flakes, I race to finish them before they get soggy.

Long ago at Indian Garden, I ordered bhel puri. They inquired how much heat did I want, which I said medium. Unfortunately medium by my (wimpy) standards is not the same as medium by Indian standards. It came above my heat tolerance, but I figured it was my own fault. Not wanting to waste food, I ate it anyway. The owner couldn't stand my pain and took it away. He told me next time to order it sweet and delivered a new batch.

Only twice have I ever had a restaurant voluntarily take my meal away. It was a Szechuan style fish with a chili sauce. I was very grateful they made this decision, though I never would have initiated it. I figure if I order wrong, it is my fault.

Regards,

I really enjoyed the recent Chicago Foodways Roundtable event at Sukhadia. It was a little hard to hear in the restaurant so I couldn't hear all of Colleen Sen's and Mr. Sukhadia's wonderful descriptions of Indian sweets and snacks (though I'm looking forward to the release of the podcast). Unfortunately, my pics of the event didn't turn out due to camera disc problems but here is a pick of the thepla (a Gujarati paratha-type bread made with atta and spinach, I believe--someone with more knowledge feel free to chime in) and carrot mirchi pickle I brought home. We enjoyed them so much, I picked up some more today.

Hi,

Your post reminded me to check to find the podcast is now up: http://www.wbez.org/story/learn-all-abo ... acks-86862

Between soft voiced presenters and loud ambient noise, it was a challenge. Now there is an opportunity to hear it better.

All podcasts of Culinary Historians, Chicago Foodways Roundtable and Greater Midwest Foodways can be found at http://www.wbez.org/contributor/culinar ... f-chicago#

Regards,

That's fenugreek leaves in the thepla. It's what gives it that yum yum taste to use a technical term.