By Asif Khan, TwoCircles.net
Between plating dishes to be served to patrons at his restaurant, Shariq hardly gets the time to look up from the pots filled with various curries lined up in front of him. The place is overflowing at the seams, and waiting for at least half an hour to grab a table isn’t unusual. It’s a motley crowd — businessmen, a group of young college-goers, salaried employees, some wearing skullcaps, and few with foreheads marked with vermillion teeka and wrists tied with scarlet kalawa.
“When my father started making mutton nihari during Ramadan thirty years ago,” he spoke wiping curry-stained fingers, “nobody understood what that meant.” People were used to ‘paaya’, a different version of preparing goat’s trotters. This resulted in some amount of intrigue, with other eatery owners trying to get a peek into the recipe. “Abba surround himself with charpaais on all sides while cooking,” he said, “but it didn’t stop there, and one of our workers was poached by another eatery.” Still, nobody could match up.
TCN Series: Ramadan 1437