Shayam Lal Halwai

Shayam Lal Halwai is located at 4727 Gali Umrao Singh in Pahari Dhiraj, which is right near Ajmeri Gate. This is one of those very old parts of Delhi where the lanes are narrow and the history is thick. My family has been making traditional sweets here for a very long time. Every single morning starts early for us, around five o'clock, when we light the big stoves to boil the milk and fry the first batch of fresh samosas. The air gets very thick with the sweet smell of ghee and sugar syrup. We don't have a fancy printed menu or any nice seating area for people. Customers just stand in the lane to eat or take their packets back home to their families. We make all the traditional things like jalebis, laddoos, and various milk-based sweets. The shop gets extremely crowded during the big festivals like Diwali or Holi. Sometimes it is even hard to move around inside with all the large metal trays sitting everywhere on the floor. We still use the same old recipes that have been around forever. I don't see any reason to change them when people still like the taste so much. The walls have some black soot from all the years of cooking over the heat, and the floor is always a little bit sticky from the syrup. It is just how a real halwai shop should be. We know our regular customers by their faces.