When we were kids, R and I were often asked if we were twins because we are pretty close in age, hung out a lot together, and always looked out for each other via some sixth sense. I think the last part still holds though we do not hang out anywhere near enough (a few oceans separate us physically) and it has been a while since anyone asked if we were twins.
As kids, R and I spent hours riding our bikes in the Ashok Nagar / KK Nagar area and had many an adventure. Manthoppu colony, Postal colony, Ayodhya mandapam, ESI, Pillar, MGRnagar – you name the street in that area and we have ridden our bikes there. There is a saying in Tamil – “Kamban ( a great Tamil poet) veetu kattu thariyum kavi paadum“, meaning “Even Kamban’s loom can pen a poem”. Like that, even the roads of Ashok nagar and KK nagar will sing our stories since our childhood was a blast.
One of the places we frequented was Matta Fast food. It was a small shop that opened in Ashok nagar by Manthoppu colony in the mid 1980s. They served mainly North Indian dishes like Pav Bhaji which is not something we cooked at our South Indian household typically. To R and I, this was fancy. R and I were early patrons – some times we would stop by on the way back home from school; other times, we came home, changed our clothes, biked for some time and found our way there. Matta was not a sit down restaurant. It was literally one room in those days for cooking with a bench to sit on outside.
R and I would bike there, yell out our order, and wait for it to come while doing small talk with the shop owner. We could also see the food being cooked. They had this huge circular tawa where the bhaji would be cooked non-stop and the pav would be cooked in butter as orders arrived. It is a fascinating thing to watch these things being cooked.
When the plates arrived with raw diced onions and lemon on the side, we would hold it in our hand (kai in tamil) and dig in. Having Gobi 65, Pav bhaji and Bread channa with steam coming from the plate was too much of a treat for us. The pav was toasted with butter and was so good just by itself. And there was a dollop of amul butter on the bhaji.
While I do not remember how much we paid, it was not more than ten rupees for a delightful repast for two little kids with voracious appetites. Things like hygiene and calories was not even a thought in our mind. All that mattered was the delicious food. R was such a master that he would gobble his order super fast and look at me with puppy dog eyes and ask me to share with him. I would relent grudgingly…
Many five star restaurants cannot even come close to the taste of street food from Matta. I do not know if Matta would make it to the late Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, but it will make it to my list of the best street food that I have had:)
epiphanu 