One of the benefits of living in an apartment when holidaying, is the opportunity it provides to go out and get in provisions and do some cooking. In this case, we did some shopping in a small locality market.

Note: Every place in Delhi seems to be “A COLONY” spelt either in English, Hinglish or in various ways in Devanagari script.

We would stop by any ‘colony’ market where we could pick up breakfast makings. Evening or nights are not for sleeping, they are buzzing – not with the crazy crowds, but just with the people in the neighbourhood.

The scooters and bikes are definitely the stall holders, and the stalls are themselves rather temporary affairs, but they seem well stocked. Because it’s winter there are plenty of locally grown vegetables that are very fresh.

But we were not in the market for vegetables, looking around for eggs and butter and bread, we found this little food shop that was using all of the above.

In Hindi, the menu says,

(transliterating here from Devanagari to Roman

Top row

Spashial Buttar Armlate     Buttarr Armlate

Middle Row

Narmull  Sendvitch Buttar

Bottom Row

Bhujji  Ba-eel Fra-ee

Totally irresistible, of course, was the smell of hot butter, sizzling fried bread, onion, chillies and eggs.

He was doing a brisk business peeling ready boiled eggs, frying them up in a bit of butter, sprinkling them with spices and herbs; or making fried eggs, omelettes and ‘sandwich’, which is of course, an indian version of French toast, neither of which (omelette or toast) has ever been seen in France. Move over Julia Childs, MasterChef and Junior MasterChef!

So here is our French toast, fried up in front of us in Amul butter and delivered piping hot to us on paper plates with pink paper napkins. Dilli ishtyle!

So, the stall holder here, whips up his cooking business with three or four stainless steel containers, a nonstick griddle, a couple of spoons..he whipped up the eggs in  one of those containers with a little spoon!, and a large spatula!

Oh, and the young boy seemed happy to work here, he was smiling and laughing at me taking photos of him. Being nosy I had to ask them about their business. He turns over Rs 5000 a day,  he makes about Rs 2500 a day, and he wouldn’t say how much he had to pay to park his stall here. All the food is delivered to him about 3 pm, they boils the eggs, cut up onions and chillies, and then he starts up around 5 pm.

Of course, this is the Special Butter they use, also the butter that everyone who’s grown up in India loves: Amul