Cathy2 wrote:I am still struggling to understand the dhaba concept
If Khan's were located in one of the highway oases - it would almost complete the dhaba-ness (it would help if it were open all night)
Almost, but not quite, probably
My concept of dhaba - please correct
Suppose you had been driving six hours, it was 2am and you still had five hundred miles to go. You pull up to the 'oasis' and it has a spot like Khan's. What heaven would be the synergy of the smells and moment! And when the food came it would not only rejuvenate but comfort and energize you to finish your journey. Even make you feel like making the trip again just to eat there...
If the dhaba is good - it doesn't have to be 2am and you may have driven only 2 miles. The smells will stop you - the food will bring you back.
I agree with all of the above - bustling, packed, food smells etc. But for me the
whole idea of it, for some reason, is the Punjabi dhaba, or those on the highways
up North in India. Even the ones elsewhere in INdia arent quite seen as "dhabas" in
my head for some reason
Maybe they can fulfill the criterion in terms of
food (would be nice if they could reach the right standard for that itself
,
but the atmosphere would be almost impossible to duplicate.
A lot of it is the atmosphere, the location, the physical look of the place. Rickety
little places, a lot of the time. Mostly open-air. Eating at tables under the
shade of a banyan tree (or any tree I suppose) A bunch of hefty
hard-charging Punjabi truck-drivers enjoying their food nearby (these are
a different breed, and vital to the atmosphere. These are the guys who drive
beatup old trucks for 12-16 hours a day . Really old trucks, nobody had ever
heard of "cruise control"... these are the guys who invented their own version
of it, they put a big ol brick on the gas pedal, prop it in place with a stick pushing
up against the seat, and drive. If they need to slow or stop - which is to be
avoided if possible - they'll knock the stick away. The number who have died
on the highways doing this have never been counted, must run into the
thousands
A friend was telling me a story a while ago, he was about 17 (a good healthy
growing boy), was at a dhaba in Punjab with his dad. They ordered a
"chotti lassI' - a small lassi. It arrived - in a glass that was narrow at the
bottom and widening towards the top, and was the length of his forearm
(he indicated it was from his elbow to about halfway up his palm
The
two of them, father and son, used 2 straws and shared it, and were
struggling to get through it together. And in walks this truckdriver, orders
2 fullsized lassis, and knocks them back right there in a few minutes before
driving off again. All this is part of what makes a dhaba a dhaba
A very "hot" restaurant in Bombay for a while when it first arrived was
"Pritam-da-dhaba" - it still does very well, though the "buzz" has moved onto
to something else, as it does every couple of weeks. They try and
recreate some of it - they have a proper "restaurant", air-conditioned with
good tables and the rest of it. But you can opt to not eat there in the
"dining room", but rather walk thru the restaurant to the back. And out back
there is a huge courtyard - surrounded by buildings on all sides, but a
massive square area in between. Here they have a few trees dotted
around, and lots of more rickety tables. Some of them are lower tables,
and these have "divans" where you can sit, with those long cylinderical
cushions to support your back (Cathy saw a pretty good version of this
sort of seating at Jewel of India - except that was a lot more upscale, with
white tablecloths etc IIRC) . A few others tables have "chaarpoys" in front of
the tables - a rural "bed" of sorts, basically a wooden 4-legs and outer
frame, with rope forming the actual sleeping surface - you sit on the
khatiyas and eat (as they do up in the rural North). They even have a
few road signs up between the tables, indicating "Ludhiana 600 kilometers"
and so on. Its what theyve done to recreate, to the best of their ability,
the atmosphere and look of the "Punjabi dhaba" in the rural north - and its a pretty
fair attempt right in the middle of a cosmopolitan city thousands of miles away.
If its a pleasant Bombay-winter evening, and youre sitting under the stars
and trees and eating sarson ka saag and butter chicken at Pritam-da-dhaba (and
its a courtyard, so you cant even see the road), and looking at road signs for
Ludhiana and Chandigarh... well, even then you cant quite fool yourself into
thinking youre actually at a dhaba in Punjab, but you at least have a better shot
at it than if you were in their air-conditioned dining room only a few yards away
Ok, I dont know why I bothered to write all that. Just googled, and found a link to
a small piece on Pritam-da-dhaba (and dhabas in general) by Busybee, here:
http://www.busybeeforever.com/viewart.a ... =eatingout
c8w