Long before Narendra Modi took jhalmuri to the Brigade Parade Grounds, it had already travelled to London.
Popularised by former chef Angus Denoon, the Brit’s cart of puffed rice and accompaniments has rolled into Oval and several fancy food festivals in London.
Denoon has been serving it for over 18 years.
His hands deftly chop onions and cucumbers before a squeeze of lime. Mustard oil follows, poured from a plastic bottle, exactly as on Calcutta’s streets.
He calls the venture Jhalmuri Express and serves the snack in a conical thonga.
In the early 2000s, Denoon stopped in Calcutta while returning to the UK from Australia. He was enchanted by the rows of street food stalls in Dalhousie and returned the following year to explore the city’s street food.
“One stall that had a place to sit was a jhalmuri stall in front of the old Dunlop Building on the corner of Mirza Ghalib Street and Royd Street near Park Street. The guy was very beautiful to watch as he swirled around his setup, mixing and chopping and roasting… like a dance, and at the end, he produced a bag of mystery to me that tasted wonderful,” Denoon had told The Telegraph in 2019.