{"id":16908,"date":"2019-10-30T17:20:25","date_gmt":"2019-10-30T21:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=16908"},"modified":"2019-12-16T15:14:06","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T20:14:06","slug":"chit-chaat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/chit-chaat\/","title":{"rendered":"Chit Chaat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; width: 100%; height: 450px;\" src=\"\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.html?backgroundColor=%23d2d2d2&amp;backgroundColorFullscreen=%23d2d2d2&amp;d=nov19_flipbook_final&amp;hideIssuuLogo=true&amp;pageNumber=56&amp;u=portlandmagazine\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Maine races to catch a <b>global food trend<\/b>.<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>November 2019<\/p>\n<p><em>By Sofia Voltin<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-16863\" src=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/nov19-Hungry-Eye-web-300x233.jpg\" alt=\"nov19 Hungry Eye web\" width=\"300\" height=\"233\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/nov19-Hungry-Eye-web-300x233.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/nov19-Hungry-Eye-web-200x156.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/nov19-Hungry-Eye-web-450x350.jpg 450w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/nov19-Hungry-Eye-web.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>I<\/span><span class=\"s1\">t\u2019s too late for lunch and too early for dinner. How about a quick <b>chaat<\/b>? This Indian street food has gained traction in cities like Philadelphia and New York, but it\u2019s still a rarity up here. Chaat combines sweet, salty, spicy, and savory flavors with crunchy ingredients\u2014topped off with trademark tangy sauces.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cNinety percent of people here don\u2019t know what chaat is, so we don\u2019t put in on the menu,\u201d says <strong>Dee Patel<\/strong>, owner of <strong>Namaste Indian Food<\/strong> in Rockport. \u201cChaat is from Northern India. It\u2019s a light dish, kind-of like eating a salad. Chaat\u2019s dressing is chutney, and it can be spicy or sweet. My favorite is Kachori Chaat. It has Indian spices with <i>moong dal<\/i> (lentils) in flour dough. It\u2019s fried and served with toppings like chutney, <i>sev<\/i>, tomato, and onion.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">\u201c<i>Sev<\/i> is a crunchy noodle topping made from chickpea flour. It gives chaat an extra crunch,\u201d says <strong>Sai Reddy<\/strong>, manager of <strong>Taj<\/strong> in South Portland. The family-owned restaurant is one of the few in Maine to offer chaat. \u201cAlmost everyone who comes in here orders our Samosa Chaat ($4.99). We make it from scratch. We cook the samosas and chickpeas in a spicy masala sauce; then the homemade yogurt sauce cools the dish down. It has mint, cilantro, and secret spices only my mother (the chef) knows. We don\u2019t offer more types because we don\u2019t want to overwhelm our small kitchen and risk sacrificing quality for quantity. We sometimes have Panipuri on weekends. They are small, round, deep-fried, crunchy pastries. We poke a hole in the center and fill it with chickpea curry and top it with onions.\u201d<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wunderground.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"https:\/\/www.wunderground.com\/\"><br \/>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Taj recently removed Bhel Puri from the menu, but Hallowell\u2019s <strong>Desi Kitchen<\/strong> still serves this chaat. Mint and tamarind sauces coat chilled boiled potatoes, chickpeas, onions and crispy chips\u2014all sprinkled with puffed rice. The flavor of each bite starts cool then tangy\u2014a tingling spice lingers at the end. The Pakistani restaurant also offers Papri Chaat ($4.99), Samosa Chaat ($4.99), and Pakora Chaat ($5.99).<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cIn Pakistan, India, and even Bangladesh, chaat is an inexpensive quick meal,\u201d says owner <strong>Mohammad Bhatti<\/strong>. \u201cMy cousin offers 15 types of chaat at his restaurant in Philadelphia, Mood Cafe. I would like to open a chaat restaurant or food truck in Portland if I could find someone good to cook for it. But there\u2019s a big lack of help right now, especially in restaurants, and it\u2019s very lengthy work.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\">\u201cThere\u2019s not a big Indian community here, unlike New York,\u201d says <strong>Tejinder Jit Taj<\/strong>, owner of <strong>Tandoor<\/strong> on Exchange Street in Portland. \u201cIn India, when everyone finishes work they go to the village marketplaces\u2014the fun place to go out at night. Everyone meets with their friends, and they walk through the markets, buying small bites here and there. We don\u2019t have that sort of thing here. Maybe it\u2019s the cold. These markets are where you find carts selling chaat. They are set up so you can pick and choose what ingredients you want, like a make-your-own sandwich shop here. I\u2019m from Punjab in Northern India, but every city has these communal places where you go out for a chat and chaat.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tracking down the North-Indian snack in Maine.<br \/>\nBy Sofia Voltin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,315],"tags":[514,520,522,515,127,523,516,521,126,517,493,298,518,519,524],"class_list":["post-16908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-hungry-eye","tag-chaat","tag-desi-kitchen","tag-hallowell","tag-indian-food","tag-maine","tag-mood-cafe","tag-namaste-indian-food","tag-pakistani-food","tag-portland","tag-rockport","tag-sofia-voltin","tag-south-portland","tag-taj","tag-taj-indian-food","tag-tandoor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16908"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17265,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16908\/revisions\/17265"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}