Kachoriwala

We are right there on Church Road, just off M I Road. You can usually smell the frying oil from down the block before you even see the shop. It’s a small space, mostly just the counter and the big iron vats where we fry the kachoris. We start early because the dough needs time to rest and the filling has to be just right. It gets very crowded around breakfast time. People stand on the sidewalk eating from little paper plates, and we try to keep the hot ones coming as fast as we can. It’s messy work. There’s flour on our aprons and the floor gets a bit slick by midday. We don’t have fancy seating or menus. You just come up, tell us how many you want, and we hand them over with a bit of chutney. Sometimes we run out of the spicy onions before the day is over, and people get a little disappointed, but that’s just how it goes when you make everything fresh. The heat from the stove is intense, especially during the summer months, but we’re used to it. We’ve been serving the same recipe for a long time now. It’s a simple business. We fry, we serve, and we clean up at the end of the day. There’s always a line of rickshaw drivers and office workers waiting for their turn. It’s just how life is here on this busy corner every single day of the week.