Ponto de Vista

So there are people out there who claim to be Gujarati and never heard of dabeli – also given the nomenclature of “fun in a bun” by my foodie friend Sheetal. Dabeli is the past participle of ‘press’ – so, in a word: pressed!
Forget vada-pav, that’s done with. Dabeli is a potato thing with raw onions (crunchy), peanuts and pomegranate kernels. And right before serving it, the vendor will sprinkle sev on it… Hot, spicy, sweet, crunchy, chewy — good stuff! At a street corner near you, but only in the evenings. And the best one ever is around the corner from my house! Yay 😀

We stopped one night after work to get a snack because I was starving. One of the group remembered there was a ‘geeley channe wala’ close to where we were, so we hunted him down and bought some boiled chickpeas tossed in chopped onions, cilantro, green chillies, salt, and lemon juice. It was tongue-tinglingly, lip-smackingly delicious. And I loved the fact that he had a muslin cloth shielding his wares and the old fashioned oil lamp…