Lucknow Food Tour

  • Arrival, Metro Journeys, and First Impressions

    Got off from plane, didn’t have checkin luggage. Battery was low, so charged phone while deciding what to do next. After charging, came out and went to the metro station entrance. From there, thought about getting a metro card for myself as a souvenir, but decided that I’ll do it later.

    Took a token-ticket to Hazratganj metro station, using the vending machine, and went ahead. Initially went to the wrong platform, realized quickly with a fellow traveller who had asked me and I had told him that it’s the correct one. Went to the other platform and a train arrived right as I was walking down the stairs.

    Quickly got in, not many people got in, and almost all of them were travellers from the airport. Started having a bout of anxiety as it was the gloomy period of evening and the sun was setting in the behind.

    The Lucknow metro is semi underground, and the CCS metro station is underground. So I was waiting for the train to come out of the tunnel so that I’ll see the light, but it had already been dark. Saw the view from the window of the Lucknow city, which was quite fun. I have always liked watching out of metro windows, it sometimes tells you how the metro line has changed the lives of people.

    Reminded me of all the Bollywood movies which are set in a typical north Indian city. Also reminded me of Dehradun, where I had done a similar quest a couple of years back.

  • Arrival at Hazratganj and Culture Shock

    Got down at the HazratGanj metro station, which also is an underground station. The feeling was somewhat overwhelming when I came out of the exit onto a road, where I saw a man, spitting paan/gutkha on the road, and I contemplated my decision to travel to a place which I always thought of as what a Britisher would’ve thought of a savage back in the 19th century.

    Saw a few shops here and there, and could instantly see the difference between cultures where —-

    The traffic was mad. There was chaos. E-rikshaw pullers coming out of nowhere onto you, and pretending as if you don’t exist on the road, and that theirs is the only vehicle which has the right of passage. Crossed a busy intersection while again contemplating my decisions while worrying about someone stealing my phone while I look for directions on the map.

    Saw a chat shop and thought about the different ways in which food is romanticised in India. I had planned to go to Kewal Ram’s Chai place or Sharmaji’s place for an evening tea.

  • Olfactory Overload and Alleys of Lucknow

    My nose hadn’t experienced so many different smells at the same time before. In that overwhelming olfactory sensation, I forgot to look at the directions and forgot to take a turn, which made me turn into a very narrow alley, which had a lot of random shops. One of which was an iron repairman, and some homeopathic medicine shop.

    After seeing all this chaos in the lanes of Kaisar Bagh, I decided to scrape the plan to go to Kewal, and go to Tunday Kababi directly instead.

    There was a surprisingly high number of homeopathy shops and practitioners in the whole area. A rickshaw puller had put his rickshaw in the alley, causing some sort of a traffic jam, while two wheeler riders shouted at the height of their voice, one guy asking the poor fellow why did he take up the challenge of climbing this hill. The poor man just took a grunt, and not affording to entertain the rider, continued, nonchalantly.

    The alley led me to a lane full of jewellery shops. This street was a bit less chaotic, but it somehow reminded me of the Hawda market near Kali Ghat. The Hawda market had literal buses plying through the mad traffic, here that wasn’t the case luckily. Only rickshaw pullers and entitled Royal Enfield riders, honking as if it’s the end of the world.

    I quickly switched to the opposite lane, where vehicles were coming at me, preventing any close calls of people coming from behind, which did happen all this time.

    The alley finally led me to the Kaisar Bagh Circle, which was so madly packed with people, vehicles, and vendors, that they had literal put barricades with chains in the middle to bring some order in that chaos. Even with all those measures, it was as if a spider had given birth to a thousand babies, all of which are crawling around in a slow Brownian way.

  • Arrival at Tunday Kababi

    I checked my phone looking for which alley to turn into for the legend Tunday Kebabi, and took a few steps towards the right, and there it was. Asserting its dominance, with all the glitter it can bring, and all the smell, smoke, chatter that one would imagine of a restaurant in the middle of Lucknow, a city in UP, romanticized by the westerners as Oudh.

    The shop was quite spectacularly amorphous, you wouldn’t really notice it if it wasn’t for the glittery lights.

    I have a preconceived notion of how a restaurant should look like and all, but this, with its different form, where people in somewhat dirty clothes, without the most minimal regard for cleanliness in their mind, working nonchalantly, with remarkable level of concentration, putting the kebabs on the huge tawa in front of them, and waiters picking up stuff in plastic plates, stacked over one another, where only the top plate worthy person gets to eat food without the latent dirt stuck to the bottoms of the other plates.

  • Dining Experience

    Again while contemplating my decisions, and worrying about the potential outcome of eating unhygienic food, I got in the restaurant, looking for a table. I was so overwhelmed by the environment in & around the restaurant, that I literally forgot to look at the different boards, staring right in front of me, showing the different celebrities which have visited the literal hole in the wall called Tunday Kebabi.

    I asked the manager for a table, where he casually asked how many people there are, and showed me a table facing the entrance. The table was placed near another opening which led to a dining area, reserved for parties with women in them. I hesitatingly sat, looking for better tables around the hotel. That made me remember the pathetic experience I had with the Nawab’s restaurant in Hyd.

    The next challenge was to find a waiter to tell my order. For the first few minutes, there was no one around which seemed like a waiter. But then a glimmer of hope emerged with a man in black overalls, with black cap, who looked like a waiter. He was quite fair, and had a look on his face as if he’s confused about something.

    He asked some other waiter to put water and salad on my table, while billing other customers. Done with the billing formalities, the importance of which I later realized, he came, and looked in a questioning gait. I told him my order of chicken biryani and mutton gilouti kabab, which he confirmed without any sense of apprehension.

  • People-Watching and Contemplation

    Meanwhile, two other men had sat on the table beside mine, and were also looking for a waiter. I was interested in their order, which, I, of-course eavesdropped, was for a boti kabab of Bade. I instinctively attempted to guess if they were Muslims, and wondering the gut resilience of people who frequent places with a specific threshold for hygiene.

    I wondered if people are built differently, or is it just the variety of food that causes them to build tolerance for all the microbia in the world.

  • Meal Time

    I got up from the table, routinely, and asked the cashier for directions to the wash basin, to which he replied with an annoyed look on his face, pointing to it. After returning I sat on the table, facing the opposite side, where my back was facing the entrance, thinking that this maneuver of mine would help reduce the amount of bacteria that touch my food, and also choosing to ignore the plate-on-top lottery results.

    It turned out to be a good idea because I could only see my plate being kept on the table, not its position on the plate stack, reassuring my belief that ignorance is indeed, quite a bliss.

    I had plate, filled to the brim with biryani, and another plate with 4 gilouti kebabs to devour into.

    In the hurry, confusion or whatever you want to call it, I decided to taste the biryani first. And it was, mid to say the least. Remembering the biryani incident of last night, I took a whiff of the rice and a piece of chicken, worrying if someone, especially the waiter or the cashier judging me.

    The sniff test was a pass, and I continued with a few more bites until I realized the kebabs on the table.

  • The Kebab Experience

    The kebabs felt as if they are actual living creatures with the only dream to be devoured by a human being. I could not help but think of the generations of chickens who have been serving Tunday Kebabi, with the only life goal of delivering flavourful protein.

    I hesitatingly took the first kebab in my mouth, and my god, what a feeling it was.

    The fucking bastard had decided to disappear in my mouth, while trying everything it could’ve done to make its demise from this world as memorable or as much of a spectacle as it could. There was a blast of flavours while the kebab disintegrated in my mouth, each piece of which trying to attack the tissues of my mouth, with the complex molecules that defined the kebab.

    Like the instantaneous burst of the flavours which initially attacked my mouth, it quickly got lost in my esophagus, while the taste lingered on my tongue, asking for more.

    Soon all the 4 kebabs were in my stomach, while I slowly ate the biryani which felt uninterested to carry out the battle of flavours. The chicken had become hard due to overcooking, and the rice barely had any flavour.

    It was as if the kebabs brought with them a unit of the army which had fierce warriors in it, and the biryani brought a unit of soldiers which were made to serve the army as a compulsion.

    Alas. I was satisfied with the decision I had made, and was satiated.

  • Paying the Bill and Farewell

    Now, the other challenge was to ask the waiter for the bill. The waiter was nowhere to be seen. The two men sitting on my side had also almost finished their kebabs. They were also looking for him.

    I got up, and went to the cashier to see if I can hurry and pay the bill there itself. But he refused asking me to wait for the waiter.

    As I came back, I saw the judgy look on the men, as if they were wondering what hurry I had of getting done.

    The waiter came, with the lottery of plates in his hand, and placed the orders on their respective tables. He was so damn busy, that I had to signal him multiple times to convey my message to calculate the bill.

    As I realized he had seen my signal, I began to lift myself and my bag from the table, and hurried to the cash counter.

    I had not checked the rates of the food, in the rush/hurry of getting the table. So I was curious, rather slightly worried about the bill, thinking of the Chandigarh dhaba incident of 2020.

    The bill was surprisingly low, and I was happy to see the harmony of flavours in my mouth had only costed me 320 rupees.

    The waiter got the bill, and brought up the card machine guessing from my card fetching action. While entering the amount in the machine, he asked for a tip, which made me remember the tipping culture around Hindi belt.

    I added the tip, and completed the payment.