I grew up in a small suburb of a city that once responded to the name ‘Bombay’. Shifting my residence meant that I was conditioned to travelling in local trains from a tender young age. As a young apprentice, I interned in the art of travelling in the ‘lifelines’ of the city along with scores of people running to work every morning and rushing back home in the evenings. This also marked the beginning of my tryst with the humble ‘vada pav’ which is breakfast/lunch/evening snack/dinner for the city’s ever increasing populace rushing about their daily chores.
A conversation with a close friend and gourmet in his own right reminded me of an experience that I had had in Delhi during my MBA days. Once while gallivanting across CR park in Delhi during Durga Puja, I came across a stall selling a familiar snack. ‘Vada Pav!’ I exclaimed, much to the amusement of my Bengali room-mates. Closer inspection revealed that it looked very much like a vada yet the pav was nowhere to be seen. Biting into the piping hot offering confirmed that it was something totally different than the vada pav that I have grown up eating. This was my one night stand with the ‘Aloo- Chop’ which is served to loyal patrons in the lanes and bylanes of Calcutta.
Move over Munni and Sheila. It is about time we stopped wasting our energies with frivolous comparisons like such and concentrate on the more serious and important things in life.
V/S 
?????
It is my humble endeavor below, to compare two culinary delights (Pardon the metaphor!) that I have had the good fortune to have actually experienced 🙂 . Both are derived from the much criticized potato and deep fried in oil but be warned, the similarity ends there.
To be fair to the readers, this post will have a guest writer who will try to demystify one of these items, while I will try to unravel the other because both are nothing less than a phenomenon and command a huge fan following in their respective regions. It is not so much a competitive shoot out, as it is a celebration of culinary delights offered and embraced with much love in different parts of our motherland.
Presenting: Vadav Pav & Aloo chop
Vada pav:
The vada pav is a ubiquitous item dished out in Mumbai, served piping hot to the ever impatient mob of people rushing about their daily chores without having the time to stop for a proper meal. Light on the pocket and heavy on the stomach it is a perfect solution to hunger pangs that one is prone to while running from platform 1 to 4 to catch the fast train to office/tution/cricket practice/home…
Let us get down to details:
The vada is a soft round sphere of potato which is boiled and mashed along with green chilies and coriander and basic condiments like asofotedia, turmeric and chilli powder. It is dipped in ‘besan ka atta’ deep fried till golden in color. The vada can be enjoyed ‘stand alone’ but it reaches its full potential when it is combined with the pav. The pav is slit in the middle so that the vada can be accommodated in its fold. The pav is smeared with meetha chutney, teekha chutney and sukkha chutney made from garlic. Finally, the vada takes its rightful place and the vada pav is ready to serve. It is best enjoyed while on the go or standing by the stall along with a cup of hot cutting chai. Throw in the much romanced Mumbai rains and you have script for a gastronomic delight!
Some of the more popular vada pav stalls in Mumbai are located in Vile Parle, right in front of NM and Mithibai College. My years in NM only served to strengthen my on-going affair with the Vada Pav. The innovation of these stalls was to introduce ‘Amul butter’ along with the wet and dry chutneys and the results were dramatic. The intermingling of the chutneys with the Amul butter melting on the hot vadas were nothing less than a gastronomic orgasm. I had a co-admirer of the Amul butter vada pav in my friend Rishi. After lectures we would routinely (read: almost every day) hop over to the stall opposite our college. We had worked out the diminishing marginal utility factor of Vada Pav to be 1.5 Vada Pavs per person!
Enterprising mumbaikars have tried to create a brand around this fabled mass product and have achieved varying degrees of success. ‘Jumbo King’, ‘Goli Vada pav’ , ‘Shiv Vada Pav’ are the newer avatars in which this humble street food is now available.
The beauty of the vada pav is that it is more than a street food item. It offers hope. To many of people caught in financial distress, making and selling it in the bylanes of Mumbai is one of the easiest way to kick start a small business. I have personally seen a friend of mine progress from being a vada pav stall owner to a chef in a 5 star hotel…
I salute this delightful snack…this beacon of hope…Long live the vada pav!
Aloo Chop:
by Samya Dutta
This comparison almost reminds me of that show on Discovery Channel, the one in which they make take two wild animals and then feed all sorts of balderdash onto the mainframe and then finish off with an animated film, just that this is much more exciting. So, here goes …ALOO, Hiiiiiiiiyyyyyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaa CHOP!!!
As already pointed out these two seem superficially similar, but then so do AC-DC and Van Halen!! There is a marked difference in the taste of the stuffing, as in this case the recipe is much simpler and the main ingredients used (along with the mashed potato) are gingers, onions, turmeric and chillies. On top of that there is also a difference in the degree of frying subjected upon the chops, as in this case that is much more. This makes it much crisper on the outside and also distinctly darker. It’s not rare to find the same stalls making both samosas and aloo chops , as more often than not the filling is the same , only in the case of the aloo chop the mash is finer.
Unlike the vada-pav, which as the name suggests is a combination of bread and potato “vada” , the aloo chop is truly stand alone. Yes, it can be combined with other items to blow the-part-of-your-brain-which-says-taste away. It forms an eclectic combination with “muri” or puffed rice, just mash your chop into the muri and chomp away. Awesome!!! But even without that it can hold its own in the pantheons of fried geniuses.
The aloo chop is not something which has to be eaten in a hurry, as in the part of the world where it is popular , there are lots of other things to be eaten on the run. In fact, it’s something that has to be savoured, eaten at leisure, with friends, or sitting at home during chilly evenings. And this comes as no surprise as the eastern part of the country, where the aloo chop is prevalent, is by itself laidback and relaxed. I can still vividly recall, all those evenings in Ranchi, riding out to HEC on my old bike and helping myself to aloo chops. And not to mention the fact that every time I land up in Kolkata it is mandatory for me to gorge down on a few of these
The aloo chop is as Eastern India as is the Vada Pav’s west. The aloo chop is individual genius and the vada pav is brilliantly cohesive. The aloo chop is sit back and relax and the vada pav is get up and run. The aloo chop is Eddie and the vada pav is Angus. The aloo chop is Van Halen to vada pav’s AC-DC.
Venky's Blog 
