Street Food: Shahdab ke Mashoor Gol Gappy

Gol Gappay or Pani poori the different words for the same amazing street food that makes any person salivating at the mention of it. Umm the thought of a crispy round poori filled with chutney and chickpeas topped with spicy and sour pani; that you pop in your mouth and enjoy the feeling of being in heavens yum! I want to have another plate please. Now Pani poori or more commonly known in Karachi as gol gappy is one of the most easiest snack available. A few problems you may encounter with them are:

1. The hygiene (but that’s a problem with most street food)

2. The pani can actually upset your tummy very bad if you have it from an unrecognized place.

3. The size of the pooris can be huge in some places so people with smaller mouths will struggle to pop them in, and there’s no point of a poori exploding outside your mouth!

4. The pani can literally be that just pani; also not very inviting. Coz the pani of a poori’s got to be all spicy and tangy but if it’s just plain water then really there’s no point in having a poori

So from all the places I could have had these poori’s I found the perfect place, located on the Ziauddin Road near the Shahdab Masid in F. B. Area Block 10. This guy is very famous, and a lot of people know of him when you’re talking about pooris but he’s a secret very few people will share with you.

A friend of mine who shares my crazy love for gol gappays drove me, I knew this guy to be a cart standing under a tree right outside the Shahdab Mosque, so it took me a while to find where this guy had moved now. I asked a boy who was out shopping for his mother about where I can find the ‘Mashoor Gol Gappay wala’ and he directed me to a shop! That was an improvement. So we parked our car outside his shop, the guy still had his cart and was just using that shop as a seating place for the many people line up. Some guys were already seated inside enjoying their chaats or their gol gappon ki plates. We decided to sit in the car and have it. I ordered for two plates and they took a while to arrive apparently a lot of people were queued for take aways. When my plate finally arrived I was ecstatic. Oh take a look at the picture and you’ll know for yourself.

As soon as I was done with the pictures for the blog I was popping these pooris in my mouth and totally enjoying it. The good thing about this fellows pooris is his poori is an appropriate size that fits into the mouth without issues, they are round so you have enough space to fill it with chanas. His chanay are not plain chickpeas but they also have potatoes and onions and coriander leaves in the mixture (taste of a chaat in a poori). Then the specialty is the ‘meethi chutney’ that goes in, it’s a thick orange chutney made of apricot, that gives the perfect tangy sweet taste and the pani is cool (he stores the pani in a matka that keeps it really nice and cool) and the water itself is sour. So you have a great combo that satiates your craving for pani pooris, and yeah just one plate isn’t enough so I had two. Two plates were quite filling you can easily skip dinner after that.

A plate of Gol gappay are charged at Rs. 50, and trust me you get your value for money. My friend tried it for the first time and was so impressed he decided to take to take a parcel home for his family. And it goes without saying his family loved it too. So I suggest if you’re in the area don’t miss it! go get yourself some Shahdaab ke Mashoor Gol Gappay!