South Bay: Chaat Paradise

In our typical indecisive fashion, it took us a long, long time before we finally all agreed to continue our undergrad roommate reunion in the South Bay. 3 of the girls slept over at my place in San Jose and the next morning we drove out to Mountain View to meet the Berkeley-turned-Stanford member of our group for an early lunch.

At least that was the plan. Our supposedly 25 minute drive turned into an hour long excursion when my friend's TomTom decided to take us on a wild goose chase. When our friend told us that Chaat Paradise specialized in Indian street food, a grassy highway entrance wasn't exactly what we envisioned. Thankfully, we eventually found our way there (albeit 30 minutes late):

The restaurant quickly filled up after we took our seats:



I'm going to come out and say straight up that I have no idea what was in each and every dish that we ordered. All I know is that it all tasted delicious.

First up was the pani poori. Pani apparently means water and poori is this type of hollow fried dough balls:

First you take a poori and gently tap a hole into it with a spoon to create a bowl. Then you fill it with whatever you want (I do a little of everything):

The fillings include potatoes, veggies that I will pretend I didn't see, raw onions, this awesome crunchy stuff, and tamarind sauce. The pani part is the mint water that you pour in at the very end.

Here's the finished product:



You're supposed to pop the entire thing into your mouth.

Next came the dahi bateta poori:

I can't even begin to list what's in this. There's a layer of poori on the bottom, topped by all this fabulousness...sort of like the Indian version of nachos. The tamarind sauce brought a slightly tangy burst to every bite.

The hara bhara bhel, on the other hand, was a bit spicy, but delicious all the same:



These had to be the cutest samosas I've ever seen:

I've never had a samosa I didn't like:

My favorite samosas, however, are still the ones that my friend's mom makes.

We thought we mind need something with a bit more substance, so we ordered some saag paneer:



The hara bhara paratha went perfectly with the creamy spinach and cheese of the saag paneer:

The hara bhara paratha is basically pan fried wheat bread stuffed with cauliflower, potatoes, and spinach:

I knew going in that Chaat Paradise is a vegetarian restaurant and to be honest, I forgot all about it once the food arrived. That's right. I said it. I enjoyed a purely vegetarian meal.

NO SHAME!

Chaat Paradise

165 E El Camino Real

Mountain View, CA 94040

(650) 965-1111

http://www.chaatparadise.com/