At a recent visit to this vegetarian Indian snack shop in far eastern Queens, tokri chat (Toke-ree Chaht) was easily our favorite.
Some recipes call for each tokri — a "basket," in Hindi, of shredded fried potato — to cradle just two or three bites of soaked chickpeas, cubed potato, chopped onion, sprouted green gram, and the like, all soaked through with several chutneys and dressed with yogurt and a sprinkling of crunchy sev. Ours, instead, was the big sharable sort, as you might gather from the partially excavated tokri below — not just the tastiest dish of the day but the messiest, too.
From the same afternoon: muthiya (moo-Tee-ah), pan-fried cakes prepared from coarse flour and, in this case, grated bottle gourd; a Mumbai grilled sandwich, whose two savory layers sport mild cheese, thin-sliced potato, and onion, plus color and zing from coriander chutney.
In 2008, on my first encounter with the sandwich, I'd noted the primness of the presentation (sans potato chips). Not so the special pav bhaji (Pow Bodg-ee), a pair of warm, buttery sliced buns (the pav) and a pool of thin vegetable curry (the bhaji) served with butter and garnishes of coriander, tomato, and onion. Since our waiter didn't deliver it himself, my dining buddy and I were at a loss: Should we dip the pav? Spread the bhaji on top? Much later our waiter told us that people eat the dish every which way; some nibble at the pav in one hand while spooning up bhaji with the other. That's how we'd cleaned our plate, I told him, though by that time I was on my third napkin.
At bottom is a photo of the snack shop from that 2008 visit; it is little changed in 2020. Several months ago, however, new owners from Kolkata — clear across the subcontinent — took over the business. (Hindi translation, and ground transportation, provided by Restaurant Fairy).
Mumbai Xpress
25605 Hillside Ave. (256th-257th Sts.), Floral Park, Queens
718-470-0059
www.Facebook.com/mumbaixpress1
Closed Monday
