Today's episode brings you an immersive day food tour in Rajkot which is another food haven in Gujarat. Let's take you through the places that we had explored with our hosts Anand and Chintan on the last day of our stay in the city.
The first stop was Shri Ganesh Namkeen. This small street side stall with an attractive banner is known for its Indori poha and kachori, which are two inexpensive breakfast options for workers and office goers in this neighbourhood. We opted for the Indori poha as we wanted to start the tour on a lighter note. What makes it different from the usual poha is the presence of fennel and crisp namkeen. Overall it was sweet and spicy.
The second stop was Shiv Shakti tea stall where the genial owner was preparing a huge batch of creamy and strong Rajkot style tea over charcoal fire. This tea was much needed to prepare us for the immersive tour ahead.
The third stop that Anand took us to was Shivam South Indian stall which is run by a family who are originally from Tamil Nadu. We were happy to find a mixed crowd thronging this busy breakfast and brunch point, most of whom were youth. Here we tried their unique dosa fry which is inspired from Tamil Nadu's famous Kothu roti. It's basically a masala dosa that has been chopped up into tiny bits similar to that of a scrambled egg. This buttery and flavourful dish was accompanied by sambar and chutney. We quite liked the unique taste.
The fourth stop was Sadguru Khaman House that is renowned for their classic Gujarati snacks like khaman, spicy khaman, patra, sev khamni, ras patra etc. Our picks were the ras patra and dahi khaman. The former one was fried patra dunked in a tangy and sweet tamarind-jaggery sauce while the later one was bite size khaman dunked in creamy and sweet yogurt. Both the dishes were utterly lip smacking.
The fifth stop was KK Beacon Hotel where we tried their much appreciated Gujarati thali. With nearly 30 different items, mostly Gujarati ones, this thali looked really tempting. Both taste and quantity wise it was phenomenal. Our favourite was the luscious puran puri, matar paneer, ringan dungri sabzi and shrikhand.
To digest all the surfeit meal that we had till now, Anand next took us to Modern Paan and Cold Drinks shop for Limbu Sharbat and Chaas soda. Both of these are considered to be digestive drinks. The first one was prepared with lemon wedges and some spices while the second one with curd and soda.
After this refreshing drinks break, we headed to Rajesh chikki, a popular name in the sweet and dessert space in the city. As the name suggests they specializes in chikki which is a brittle made with different nuts, seeds and jaggery or sugar. The young owner presented us nearly 10 varieties of chikki to taste among which four of them were sweet bites. All of them were so amazing that it was hard to pick a favourite.
Next we went to Riddhi Siddhi Farm for their extremely popular sweet corn soup. This place is all about healthy soup, juices nad condiments that are made with organically grown ingredients. The sweet corn soup had both the kernels and its paste. There were no artificial flavourings. The seet corn used in this comes from the family farm itself.
The last stop of this tour was Shiv Shakti Dairy which we went to visit along with our host Chintan. Here we got the opportunity to visit their huge mechanised workshop which was fully busy