Payal Dhawa

Our place is called Payal Dhawa and we are located in Sangam Vihar, Sector No 18. Specifically, we are at G 2 on Ratiya Marg. If you know Delhi, you know Sangam Vihar is very crowded and the lanes can be quite narrow. We’ve been here for a while now, serving basic food to the people living around here. It’s not a fancy restaurant at all. We have some wooden tables and a few fans that hum all day long. My brother and I run the place together. We get up early to buy the flour and the dal from the local market. The traffic on Ratiya Marg is always a mess, so getting supplies can take a long time. We mostly get laborers and shopkeepers who want a quick lunch. 110062 is our pin code, and this neighborhood never really sleeps. Even late at night, there are people walking by. We stay open until the food runs out. Sometimes the electricity goes off and we have to use candles or lanterns, but we keep cooking anyway. It’s a tough life in the city, but we like being our own bosses. We don't have a menu printed on fancy paper, we just tell people what we made that morning. It’s just how things are done here in our part of town and we don't plan on changing much.