Old food, new stall. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Every so often one runs across something in Delhi that is almost too good to be true. But the spiced potato mix served at this pavement stall clearly wins the day. It’s just the right kind of filling for a perfect samosa—the old-fashioned kind that used to be served by hawkers right inside the dark auditoriums of the single-screen movie theaters. But Kanta Prasad chooses to makes aloo parathas out of this delicious potato mash. The man’s one-table stall in the business district of Barakhamba puts to rest all the myths about those famed parathas at Moolchand’s midnight eats. His don’t taste mass produced at all; and convey a homey flavour that might remind

The hyperlocal halwa. [Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi] Muhammed Sajid’s mithai shop in Old Delhi’s Turkman Gate Bazaar is as fickle as a moody chameleon. It shows different colors at different times of the day. In afternoons you see the young man and his assistants frying golden-brown jalebis in a giant cauldron. In the night, they sit beside stacks of black gulab jamuns, while the shop glows in white light. In mornings the counter has a giant platter filled with Mr Sajid’s yellow sooji halwa–the peculiar color coming from the addition of zarda. The Mughal-era quarter has a large number of breakfast places offering fairly good to unusually excellent sooji halwa, which the area’s hyperlocal citizenry likes to lick clean with freshly-fried