Sarafa Bazaar
Sarafa Bazaar
Sarafa would very likely be the first to-do on your Indore bucket list. Rightly so! Get set for a mega food onslaught at this night food market that's a jewellery hub by day. That's Indore for you
Text: Team UpperCrust
Photographs: Farzana Contractor
Midnight cravings? Friends want to go out for a ride and grab some grub? The family feels like a little sweet treat post dinner? You want to show a visitor what Indore is all about? You head to Sarafa Bazaar, just two kms away from Rajwada Palace! Open from 9 pm to 2 am, this food street is famous the country over for its buzzing vibe, its myriad of food stalls and its endless variety of food items, all vegetarian, all street style, all very pocket-friendly!
Note of caution, do not visit Indore in the summer months like we did, for a jaunt to Sarafa in the dry heat the city gladly bestows upon you, with warm bodies bumping into each other, and the steam from the cooking pans is cruel. We figure Taylor Swift wrote Cruel Summer for Indore! We digress… Indore is all about its food and its netizens are foodies through and through. They tell us, Bombayites, to our surprise, that when breakfast is done, lunch is already on their minds, and so on...
So we head out on a Sarafa stroll when it’s at its peak, post 9 pm when it opens and when the jewellery store owners have pulled their shutters down. Now, the night belongs to the food stall owners who set up shop and beckon late night gourmands to them. This is what makes Sarafa Bazaar unique, and a real street food haven. Not to mention the array of foods…
We started off with stalls that groaned with the weight of the gulab jamuns soaking in saccharine syrup – the angoori and the bada variety – and discovered Indori jamuns next, deep purple and inviting. The moong dal halwa looked tempting enough for us to parcel some back to our hotel and the malpuas were good enough to window shop, given the calories they so readily offer. And we knew we had to be selective on this food journey of ours, for we had to bring you the most exclusive that Sarafa Bazaar is known for, for which we had to taste first! Well, shoot first, then eat, as the order of an UpperCrust work trip goes!
Joshi House's dahi bada and bhutte ki kees are two of the must-haves, not just for the authenticity of these Indori staples but more so for the show Mr Joshi puts on when serving you. Dahi wada (pronounced with the ‘b’ in the northern parts of India) is tossed into the air, flipped and handed to you safe and intact. Impressive! Next up, the Chole Tikki from Saawariya…You have to shut your eyes to the ‘deep-fried’ where these potato patties are concerned, and feast on the outcome. Served with tangy chutney, this is one to certainly not miss. One other thing you cannot miss, even if you tried, are the two 'golden' men selling ‘gold’ kulfi. You would have read about them in our Starters section few issues ago. We were seeing them in the flesh and it is quite something how they adorned all that heavy gold in the Indore heat, in crowded Sarafa Bazaar. Guess it’s the kulfi that keeps them cool. And watch out for the rivalry between the two while you’re licking away on some cooling relief.
Spiral potatoes will also catch your eye and little bowls of fried chunks of purple yam known as garadu, too. Weird food combinations tend to feature as well in the Indori Chaap Kulcha, and what was even weirder was to see a young girl get her ears pierced at one of the jewellery stores that had not yet shut shop. The timings at Sarafa tend to overlap with the nightbirds taking over even before the rightful store owners have concluded business for the day. This, coupled with the fact that the use of LPG cylinders on ground at the venue poses a big risk to the stores there, and the people most importantly. The Sarafa Association of Jewellers and the Sarafa Chaupati Association have apparently agreed to the proposal to move the food stalls to another location that is more suitable.
We are not sure if this move will be set in motion anytime soon and if Sarafa Bazaar will find a new address but for now, we’re glad we could visit and bring you a taste of this Indore establishment, one that you should partake of soon!