Greetings Friends.
I'm about to travel 26 hours to a small town in North Carolina
because there's an Indian restaurant there that has been named America's
most outstanding restaurant.
And I'm going to give you an honest review
of just how close to authentic Indian food
this restaurant is in this small town in North Carolina.
I've made it all the way from Mumbai to the Chai Pani restaurant here
in Asheville, in North Carolina,
and this town is different.
It's a very cute little beautiful town, very alternative, very a little bit hippie
and a little bit of weird stuff happening on the street.
So quite a lot of homelessness.
And this guy sitting in a bus stop is drinking.
He stood up and started yelling at me and like waving some signs
of his fingers in the air. I don't know what that's called.
Yeah, it was weird.
So, come. Let's go inside and
let's see
just how authentic Chai Pani restaurant is.
And let's see if it lives up to the name. Okay?
I’m in the queue now, and the people next to me,
they had said that they've given me a great review
and I will got to show you guys this.
Look, there's a queue
and it goes all the way around the corner.
So yeah, there's a queue for Indian food here in the US.
How cool is that?
All right.
I'm here at Chai Pani, and I'm very, very excited.
Let's have a quick look at the menu.
I'm hoping they haven't whitewashed the Indian food here
for the American palate, which, as far as I can tell on this trip, it's
very salty and very, very sweet and I don’t say that in a bad way because I love it.
Like, who doesn't love super salty and super sweet?
But in India, I think we think we like salty food.
But you have not been to America.
These guys love salty food.
So let's hope that it's authentic.
Let's hope that there's no fusion business going on here.
Indian food don't need fusion.
I just want to eat authentic Indian street food.
And from the people outside here, I met a lot of very nice people,
they have been here before and they said it's incredible.
It's amazing that this chef, the owner of this restaurant, he's from Mumbai,
he's convinced white people or westerners to eat some of these Indian foods,
which is simply just hard to explain to people.
How do you explain what is Sev Potato Dahi Puri?
Or how do you get Westerners to eat
something like Pani Puri?
Every time I've got a Westerner to eat Pani Puri, they have hated it.
Pani Puri Is this green water.
It looks like dirty water inside a shell and you put in your mouth
and it explodes but the spices are not what our palates are used to.
So this chef has done an incredible job
of getting Westerners to try to expand the horizons past butter chicken.
That is what I'm trying to say.
He's getting people to try these very niche
Indian street foods.
And these foods are quite rare to find outside of India.
So we're going to try a few now and explain to you what they are.
We'll look at the price, we'll
look at the quality, we'll look at how authentic they are.
All right.
The first item is here, and this is a mango lassi.
It's 400 Indian rupees or $5 American.
So let's see.
We’re off to a bad start.
I hope this meal improves of the food which is coming now.
I'm not getting any mango flavor.
So this drink should be made by placing yogurt,
fresh mango, and some sugar in a blender and blending.
But yeah, I think they've just not used enough mango.
And I guess mango is expensive here.
I mean, it's expensive in India right now because there is a mango shortage.
Okay.
So yeah, the prices are really high in India
and that would make them even more expensive here in the US.
So maybe that's the problem. The mango shortage is hit Chai Pani as well.
But, I’m going to be hopeful for the food, okay?
Let's see.
So in front of me here,
we have Sev Batata Puri, as we would say, in India.
And so this is my favorite Indian dish of all time.
This is one of the very first Indian dishes I ever tried in my entire life with
one of my Indian friends in New Zealand, that was Parizad Bharucha.
And so I've loved this since I was a teenager.
And it's really good at Karachi Sweets in Mumbai.
I go there to eat this.
My favorite one of these was in Siliguri, West Bengal.
So yeah, I got a lot of experience of this and it's these little crispy
shells filled with yogurt and filled with, you call it cilantro here?
coriander
and onion
and tamarind chutney.
And it's like a little spaceship.
And you just stick this in your mouth and it just explodes.
And all these guys around me are going to try it right now, too, let's see.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's perfect.
It's great.
The chef hasn't made it less spicy for Americans
and he's kept it exactly as it would taste in India.
So now you guys pass it around and
let's see how they like it.
Yeah, yeah.
Just shove it in
Have you tasted anything like that before?
No, they haven't.
All right, guys, we got some spicy dishes here,
so we have Bhel Puri here.
This is just puffed rice with a ton of spices, a ton of tamarind.
And these little kind of biscuits called sev.
Kind of like potato crisps, but they look like noodles.
And then we have Aloo Tikki.
This is my wife's favorite and they've surrounded it and chickpeas, in Chole.
And inside here, aloo tikki, is so aloo is just potato.
So this is just a potato patty and you can just cut into it
and scoop it up with some chickpeas and eat it.
One thing I noticed, you got to work on the pronunciation
of these dishes for the waiter staff.
They're pronouncing everything quite, quite wrong.
But, yeah, let's try the food.
This is beautiful, right?
Like the plating of that.
I don't know what that looks like.
Looks like a mountain.
And let me just show you inside.
Look at that colour.
Incredible. right?
So we share everything in India like this.
Like you pass a plate around and it's like that.
I know Americans and Europeans,
can be a bit weird, like eating off someone's plate
who's taken it off, but everyone here is okay with it.
All right. Let's start with the Bhel.
And whenever my wife walks past a Bhel Puri maker on the streets,
she has to stop and eat this dish.
I don’t eat it on the streets.
So, for example, on the streets, they’ll make this up for you.
And to eat it, they won't give you a spoon.
They’ll rip a bit of cardboard off a box nearby and you'd have to eat it with
the bit of cardboard.
So yeah, not the cleanest.
It's really good.
A little too much lemon, but I kind of like it like that.
Let’s try the Aloo Tikka Chaat.
The chickpeas are spot on.
The chickpeas is spot on but Aloo Tikki,
Aloo Tikki is meant to be a round potato ball
that has been deep fried and so the outside of it becomes crispy.
You get like this crispy shell around the potato.
The shell of this one wasn't crispy.
I'll try a few more dishes and then I'll give you, like,
my opinion on the masalas here, on the spice mixes they're using.
Oh, yeah.
It's just. It's just like a potato chip.
This is it here.
People sometimes use them as spoons.
Like that.
This is every day food on the street.
This is the cheapest form of food possible.
In India, each of these dishes would cost maybe a $1.20 American.
and yeah,
Or even less, it depends on city you’re in.
And all those dishes have been like $10
around ₹800 rupees Indian.
Now, in front of me here, I have a very, very,
very famous dish from Maharashtra.
I think you guys would like this, so I need to order some more.
This is a very, very simple vegetarian burger.
It's just a bun.
And inside you have this green chutney.
And this is just meant mint chutney.
And then you have
a potato bone and then you have red chutney.
This is like, this is chili. This is chili.
And inside the potato ball,
you are going to get a bunch of spices like turmeric.
And I know it's just really yummy.
It's this yellow potato.
And I made a big mess of that.
But this all comes together into what's called a Vada Pau.
And this is how much this is $12 for two.
$5 for two, about ₹960.
It’s not quite right, okay?
It's close enough.
It's close enough. It's not bad.
And I'm going to talk about the masala right now.
So all the masala mixes and all the spice mixes in all these dishes
I’ve had so far, it hasn't been exactly what you're going to taste in India.
It's been changed a bit.
So, it's maybe like, I dunno, it’s
not exactly what you're going to taste on the streets of India.
That that's that's all I can say.
It's not bad, though. It's very tasty.
That's not exactly it's not exactly Indian street food
in terms of the spice mix and the flavours.
Now, look at this.
This is called Sloppy Jai.
Well, that's what he put it in the menu.
But it's pretty simple.
It's similar to the Vada Pau that we just had,
except inside we have kheema or mincemeat.
And this is lamb
and the green stuff you can see there that is just cilantro or coriander.
I always love this dish. I'm making such a mess down here.
You can't see. All these guys their tables are
Beautiful. But mine is so messy down here.
Okay, this dish is the closest that I found to India here.
Yeah. Try the sloppy jai.
It's really, really good.
And you just. You just even like a burger. It's going to get a bit messy.
It's going to drop out, but yeah, this is called Kheema Pau.
This is very different.
This isn't British tea. This is like
tea grown in India.
And then they just boil it with milk.
100% milk.
No water in this.
And see, I don't know if I can show you the colour.
Yeah, I can, see the colour there?
It's nearly tipping.
It's the right colour.
When I order a tea, you want to see like a dark brown colour.
Like this is.
Means a strong.
Tea’s good.
I'm a tea connoisseur and I make it at home for my family.
So for me to say it’s good...
I’m enjoying it.
Yeah everybody takes sugar in their tea in India.
It has to be in there.
It's milk tea though.
It's not like black tea they’ll.
drink just normal without sugar.
Oh, hey, bro.
So it’s like...
Yeah, it's not exactly India, right? - Yeah.
It's like maybe 70% there. - Okay.
The spice mixtures aren’t what you taste on the street.
Right.
But in terms of like the experience and being able to try
like so many different dishes together, that's really fun.
I think it's good.
Now come to India and try the real one, please.
Take care.
No, no, a pleasure. Bye.
Inside Chai Pani you'll find a number of signs written in Hindi
like this one t at says "Champions of Quality, Snacks Store, Chai Pani, Asheville”
and the name Chai Pani has an interesting double meaning too.
Chai Pani literally means tea and water,
but it's used in the context of a light meal or snack.
Its double meaning comes from when someone with authority
asks you for a little "chai pani."
If you know what that means, drop it in the comments.
So that was Chai Pani.
And I just talked to one of my subscribers in there,
a guy from Mumbai, and he had the same opinion as me.
Yeah, I'm glad he backed me up on that when I chatted with him.
But, you can’t deny that
it's amazing to see a queue for Indian food in a foreign country
and to see all these Westerners eating Bhel Puri & Sev Batata Dahi Puri.
That's incredible.
So I think the experience of going there as a foreigner and being able to try
all these quite rare Indian dishes that are hard to find here in the US,
that is a great experience.
But what I would say after that is if you like the food at Chai Pani,
you please come to India right away and enjoy authentic Indian food.
You are going to absolutely love it and fall in love with India
And what I always say about India is,
India will change you. India will change your life in some way and change you as a person in some way.
So please come and eat the food
and head that life changing experience in India.
Long live India.