Brainless but still good, piping chapati
I remember the trauma like it was yesterday. It was sometime in the late 1980s when my folks yanked me along for a chapati dinner at Norris Road in Little India. Only, it wasn’t just the usual chapati with keema we were having – but beja, or to the uninitiated, goat’s brain masala.
At the raucous coffee shop that housed only the famed Azmi Restaurant – or stall more like – my dad coaxed eight-year-old me endlessly into giving the beja a try. I simply sat and stared at the dish in perplexity. Brains? How can anyone eat brains? I thought. But I gave it a go, and tasted mush coated in masala. I spat it out and washed my taste buds with a bottle of 7-Up.
Today, some 30 plus years on, Azmi’s establishment still stands as the sole occupier of a corner coffee shop in Norris Road. But beja is no longer on the menu, much to my chagrin.
You see, as I grew older, my taste buds became more sophisticated. And after having a delicious version of beja during my teenage years at a Gujarati relative’s home, I became a convert. It was then that I appreciated the texture of the uh... meat, and its unique taste which paired so well in between a tear of chapati.
“Supply for beja at the market is hard to come by,” explained Mr Abuzer Alam, who runs the Azmi stall along with his brother Bilal.
“Sometimes we can get, sometimes cannot. And then customers would complain: ‘Why don’t have? We travelled all the way here today’. So we stopped selling it completely.”
Azmi Restaurant was started by Abuzer’s grandfather Ifthekar, who came here from Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh. Together with his son Intezar Ahmad, he set up his now legendary Little India eatery in 1960, which soon became more familiarly known as “Norris Road chapati”.
The scene at the establishment today is a far cry from yesteryears’. Back in the day, Mr Intezar – or “bhaiyaji” as he was often referred to – would be ever-present behind a large tawa (round griddle), sporting a permanently stained towel over one shoulder and a scowl on his face as he patted down hot and puffed up chapati.
The place was always packed on Sundays, and the menu was limited to just three or four dishes, most notably the mutton keema.
Mr Abuzer, 45, said he remembers those days well too. His father died in 2006 at the age of 65, prompting him and his brother to take over the stall.
“When my father started the business, there were just five or six restaurants in Little India – Komalas, Anandha, Sri Vijaya and one or two others. But only we served chapati. Now, there are around 130 eateries in the area,” he said.
To compete, Mr Abuzer has had to up the ante in terms of the menu offerings. Just last year, the stall started selling butter chicken and paneer with peas. There’s also fish curry and biryani on offer.
Saddened by the lack of brains on a plate, I opt for a traditional order of two chapatis with keema and paya (bone marrow) masala.
Mutton keema is the prized offering at Azmi’s. Minced mutton seasoned with garam masala and other spices accompanied by green peas and finely-diced potato. Not every keema dish has potatoes in it, mind you, and this is really what makes Azmi’s version stand out.
For me though, it was the paya masala that I couldn’t stop dipping the piping hot chapati into. While it resembles “sup tulang” served at Indian Muslim prata joints islandwide, paya – a quintessentially North Indian dish – is thicker, spicier, and not at all red.
More significantly, it’s not just about the marrow inside the bone – which you have to repeatedly knock out, splattering masala all over the table and iPhone – but more so the trotter-resembling meat on the outside.
“Simply delicious, and just like old days,” I said to Mr Abuzer.
“Now please don’t discontinue the paya as well.”
Get The New Paper on your phone with the free TNP app. Download from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store now