Referred to as the land of Tea, Tourism, Transport and Timber, Siliguri, is a major commercial center of North Bengal. It is blessed with abundant natural beauty and rich cultural. Siliguri also boasts of a vibrant street food scenario full of fascinating tastes, actions and stories.
So in today's episode we bring you an amusing food tour from one of the busy neighbourhoods in the city that we had undertaken along with our gracious host Prerna from Our Guest Travels.
Before heading to our first stop we did a quick tour of the famous Hong Kong market. It is the busiest market in the city where one can find latest cosmetics, electronic goods, apparels, electronic goods etc at an economical rate. The place is crowded, colourful and noisy. Our first food stop over here was the Arya Bakery in Bidhan Market. Here we polished off a delicately flaky chicken patties whose filling was just on point. Next we went to Kabita bakery to try the cheese rolls. These tiny bow tie shaped snacks are a hot selling fare and Prerna’s favourite too. We bought some and carried it to Siliguri Krishna Mobile Tea to be had with chai. The tea over here was quite good while the puffs were addictive.
This was followed by a brilliant Wai Wai chaat and quintessential jhal muri from Bairagi Jhal Muri parked some distance away. We loved the Wai Wai snack as it scored both on taste and texture. Then we had a plate of fresh steamed momo from the busiest Momo Shop in Momo Gali because we can never get enough of these steamed dumplings. Next we gobbled down some Bengal style phuchkas from Shridhar phuchka cart that were served with gondhoraj lemon flavoured water.
Prerna then took us to Kishna Tikki Ghugni for a plate of this delightful combination. The crusty tikki gelled well with the spicy ghugni and chutneys. Our search for some more local favourites led us to Prakash mixture where we had a tasty channa jor garam. This was followed by some chop and samosa which are the favorite evening snacks over here an quite ubiquitous too. Next we had a delicious protein packed dish called dim ghugni and it turned out to be truly impressive. The penultimate dish was pav bhaji from Bombay Pav Bhaji. It was quite similar to its Mumbai counterpart. Finally we ended the tour with chilli sekuwa which is a fusion between Nepalese and Indo Chinese styles.