A breakfast-time tour of Varanasi, India's sweet-toothed city

Spiced chai, silver leaf and morning dew combine in the street-food scene of one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities

Rada Krishna Dhandar serves malaiyo on a busy Varanasi street. Photo: Stuart Butler

“In order for it to have the proper taste, it must be made here in Varanasi’s old city.” As the shop owner spoke, I peered through the glass-fronted doors of the wooden cabinet at a dozen trays filled with tempting sweets.

“Once,” he continued, “a very rich man asked if I could come to his home to make sweets for a wedding celebration. I knew my sweets wouldn’t taste the same if I made them elsewhere, so I told him I would do it, but only if he recreated all the ghats of Varanasi in his garden!”

At first glance, there's little to make this shop, Rasvanti Sweets, stand out from the numerous other sweet shops in Varanasi. In fact, if I hadn’t been told otherwise, I would have probably passed right by it. But my guide Ajay, a dapper elderly gentleman, had insisted that this was indeed the best sweet shop in Varanasi. In a city with such a sweet tooth, this is quite the claim.

Varanasi is one of the holiest places on earth for Hindus. Photo: Stuart Butler

The shop, which was really more of a busy kitchen with just a single wooden cabinet of sweets stuffed into the doorway, was buzzing with activity. To my right, a man was leaning over a giant wok stirring a batch of sweets that sizzled and popped in the boiling oil. In the darker recesses behind him, other people kneaded, pummelled and chopped while others stirred slow boiling vats of milk, the basis of so many Indian sweets.

“My father started this business when he was young,” the owner went on. “We only make a few different kinds of sweets and we’ve been using the same recipes for them ever since my father made the first ones.” He opened the door of the cabinet and gently picked up a delicate-looking triangular sweet which he handed to me.

“This is malai paan gilori. It’s our speciality.” While I popped the milky parcel, wrapped in edible silver leaf, into my mouth, he explained that it originated from Lucknow, but that they’d taken that version and given it a Varanasi twist.

One of the holiest places on Earth for Hindus, Varanasi in northern India attracts tens of thousands of religious devotees every year. By bathing in the River Ganges, which flows through the city, pilgrims believe that a lifetime of sins will be erased. By dying here, a Hindu is thought to achieve "moksha", meaning their soul is released from the endless cycle of rebirth.

Not only is the city holy, it’s also as old as they come. Legend has it that Varanasi was founded thousands of years ago by the Hindu god, Lord Shiva. It was, so the story goes, the first place where the divine light of Shiva pierced primordial darkness and brought light to the Earth. Archaeologists though, who have a less colourful take on history, say that the city was founded at least 3,000 years ago, which, even without the help of the gods, still makes it one of the oldest cities on the planet.

A city of taste

Varanasi is renowned across India for its superb street food. Photo: Stuart Butler

Varanasi though, is more than a city of spirituality. It is renowned across India for its superb street food. For a passing tourist though, finding the best street food in Varanasi is no easy task, as many places are discreet, often unsigned and frequently tucked toward the end of a dimly lit alleyway that travellers are unlikely to find without a little local help. Fortunately, I had local help. Ajay Pandey, from the Banaras Cultural Foundation, which works to preserve the heritage of Varanasi, had agreed to take me on a breakfast-time tour of some of his favourite places to eat.

The day had started hours earlier with an early morning chai. As anyone who has ever spent more than about 38 seconds in India will be able to tell you, it’s chai that makes India turn. A recent study concluded that about a billion cups of the drink are consumed every day across the country. So, when Ajay suggested we meet that morning at one particular old town shop, Lakshmi Chai, I was curious as to the reasons why he would have chosen that particular one out of the hundreds in Varanasi. “Firstly, you won’t get a better chai in the city and secondly, because the owner is quite a legend,” he replied.

Chai and toast being prepared at Lakshmi Chai. Photo: Stuart Butler

Buried in an enclosed alleyway off the chaotic main street, Lakshmi Chai was as far removed from the bright, modern Instagram-friendly cafes that are taking over some Indian towns as you can get. Crowds of people surged in and out of the gloomy cellar-like interior. A man in a stained string vest flipped bread over an open flame while another slathered a white, creamy butter onto the toast and dished them out to hungry customers.

Oblivious to all that was taking place around him was the owner Ganesh. He was focused on the large vat of chai he was brewing. With all the skill of a chemistry professor, he mixed milk, sugar and tea leaves, stirred and boiled and then, as the chai reached its pinnacle of perfection, he poured. As he did, he told me that he makes about 200 litres of chai a day. “I’ve been making chai like this since I was four years old. Now I’m 52.”

Next, we set off in search of that Varanasi breakfast classic, gol kachori – a flour dough ball that is stuffed with spiced, mashed potato, peas, dal and spices, then served with a dollop of chutney and topped with a flourish of grated carrot and radish.

Ajay told me that there were a couple of places in the old city renowned for their gol kachori, but that his favourite was Neelu Kachori Bhandar. Open only in the morning, it would be a stretch to describe this century-old, family-run place as a restaurant. It’s quite literally only a doorway with just about enough room inside for the family to do the cooking while clients – such as Ajay and I - eat standing outside in the street.

Neelu Kachori Bhandar specialises in gol kachori. Photo: Stuart Butler

Our next course was to be something a little sweeter. Finding it involved tracking down one particular man, Rada Krishna Dhandar. When we finally find him, on a noisy street corner, he’s stood under a brightly coloured parasol doling out little clay bowls each filled with a pale-yellow froth known as malaiyo or nimish to a mass of people impatient to tuck into this bubbly delight.

Unique to Varanasi and a handful of nearby towns and cities, malaiyo is churned milk mixed with saffron and sugar. Sounds simple enough, but for the key ingredient, the chef is reliant on Mother Nature. Malaiyo can only be made through the cooler winter months and even then, it’s only good if eaten early in the morning. And this is because the process of making it is reliant on morning dew (nimish).

“The churned milk is left out overnight to cool down and mix with the morning dew,” explained Ajay as he savoured a mouthful. “After around eight hours it’s rechurned and that’s when it takes on its soft yellow tinge.” The resulting foamy mix simply dissolves in the mouth with a light, almost vanilla ice-cream-like taste that can momentarily transport you far away from Varanasi's incessant hooting of vehicles.

Sighing happily, Ajay returned his clay pot to Dhandar. “To finish our breakfast, I think we need some sweets. And I know just the place,” he said as he led me down a whirl of narrow streets to meet a sweet maker who insisted that the secret to the taste was the city of Shiva itself.