I was surprised by this particular article after a string of really negative reportage from the same author, but India can really captivate people :)

STEPHANIE NOLEN

Delhi, India — From Saturday's Globe and Mail
05:16PM EDT

.Four hundred years ago, Emperor Shah Jahan rode his elephant from his sprawling marble palace of an afternoon, out along Chandni Chowk, the street named for the moonlight that reflected in its tree-lined canal. Both sides of the road were lined with restaurants and stands selling chaat, small savouries. Shah Jahan, in addition to being a conqueror of peoples, a builder of cities and a patron of the arts, really liked a good snack.

Under his royal patronage, this jewel of a street became the snack capital of the world, a title it arguably continues to hold today.

At the spice market, mix essential seasonings – such as turmeric, coriander, cumin, cardamom, aniseed and cloves – used in favourite dishes in Old Delhi’s truly local food destinations.
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However, much else has changed from the emperor's era. The canal is paved over. The trees are a distant memory. The palaces and mansions of courtiers are tumbledown and ransacked. The royal elephant has been replaced by a honking, filth-spewing snarl of cars and trucks and buses and rickshaws and bicycles and bullock carts. Stinking drains drip into the streets, and while the moon still rises over Chandni Chowk, one is hard-pressed to spot it beneath the explosion of pirated electric wires and clouds of smog that blot out the sky.

But don't let any of that put you off. The snacks have endured gloriously well.

If you should find yourself with just one afternoon in Delhi – on your way to the beaches of Goa, a trek in the Himalayas, or meetings in one of the new high-tech centres – you can plunge into India's history by eating your way across the Old City, the first city, at the heart of the modern capital.

Delhi, it is often said, is in fact seven cities, one built on top of the next – from the first built by Hindu kings of the 10th century through to the tidy capital of the British raj. Each epoch left its architectural imprint here – and Salma Husain, the city's foremost food historian, explains that the successive empires left their mark on the food as well.

Once a researcher in India's national archives, Ms. Husain – a self-described foodie who hails from Mumbai – began hunting in manuscripts she translated from Persian for references to food. She quickly became fondest of Moghul-era documents, because the Moghuls brought the same more-is-more sensibility to cuisine that led to other of their creations, such as the Taj Mahal.

Ms. Husain's initial curiosity became a hungry obsession, and she travelled across India and then internationally, hunting for more manuscripts that made mention of food. She learned how the Moghuls brought Central Asian favourites with them as they conquered the area, but welcomed contributions from Persia and Afghanistan – early fusion, as it were.

Then she started eating in Old Delhi – and learned that, happily for today's visitor, it is still possible to sample much of what the emperors loved to eat, as long as you are prepared to make the trek into the heart of their city, or what is left of it.

Ms. Husain suggests you start out in late afternoon; you want to avoid the worst of the heat, and most of the street food vendors don't set up until 4 p.m. Take a taxi or an auto-rickshaw to the centre of Old Delhi, get out near Town Hall and, with the looming bulk of the Lal Qila, the Red Fort, behind you, head down the street in the other direction. To get in the mood for this adventure, begin where Chandni Chowk ends, at the spice market. Here, rows of stalls sell the essentials of Indian cookery: turmeric, coriander, cumin, cardamom, aniseed, cloves, red chili and black pepper. The discriminating Delhi shopper selects some of each and has them ground together into a masala, rather than buying one of the pre-mixed packets – there is, sniffs Ms. Husain, “a lot of adulteration” by unscrupulous spice merchants who slip some flavourless pepper in place of a pricier key ingredient.

From the spice market, walk back west toward the Red Fort, along the congested sidewalks of Chandni Chowk. Begin your snacking on the sidewalk: Near Town Hall sit vendors with chaat – the name comes from the Hindi verb for “to taste” – such as kachori, small pastry shells holding masala potatoes. You can have a small plate for eight rupees, or two cents. There is, of course, the risk of belly troubles that always comes with street food, and this venture is not for the faint of stomach, but if you stick to the items that are solid and scraped into your pressed-leaf plate from a sizzling grill (rather than something such as gol gappa, pastry balls filled with watery coriander sauce), you should be fine.

For something a little more solid, head toward the fort, keeping an eye out for an alleyway that turns off from the right-hand side of the street – the landmark is a shop advertising “pure desi ghee.” Follow the alley through two twists and turns (or just ask anyone) to Pandit Gaya Prasad Shiv Charan. This hole-in-the-wall, established in 1872, was a favourite haunt of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and it remains a beacon for lovers of parantha – stuffed flatbread. That may sound like something of an oxymoron, but parantha are an elaborate treat: Wheat dough is kneaded together with a filling – anything from finely chopped eggplant to peas and cauliflower to shredded chilies and fennel seeds – and rolled flat, then fried. This shop offers a whopping 23 varieties of parantha, and each is served on a metal tray with coriander chutney, mint chutney, mixed vegetable pickle, paneer and potato curry, potato and fenugreek curry, and sitaphal – mashed, sautéed sweet pumpkin. Rip up your parantha (no one seems to manage to wait until it cools from the griddle, so there's some tossing it back and forth from hand to hand for the first few bites) to scoop up a mix of everything. Your bill here, for one tray of goodies and three parantha: about $1.

Leaving the paranthawallah, you can take a quick diversion to the right to visit one of Old Delhi's most magical streets – the gaudy and glittering market of wedding accessories. Tiny shops sell gold organza gift bags, gilt-dusted grooms' turbans, flower garlands, gem-encrusted saris and handy pop-up statues of the elephant god Ganesh. But soon head back to Chandni Chowk and proceed right, further toward the Fort – it's time for some sweets.

Just a minute or two along the right-hand side of the street is a shop called Ganthewala, founded in 1790 and run today by descendants of that first family. The original shop sold sweets, and in a bit of good public relations used to present them to Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar when he processed by on his elephant – or so the story goes. The emperor may or may not have enjoyed the sohan halva, for which the shop remains famous (a mix of wheat sprouts, sugar and ghee – clarified butter – with almonds, pistachios and cashews pressed on top as it hardens). But the elephant loved it and would stop outside, refusing to go further until she got her share. She would toss her head impatiently, and the jingling from her decorative harness gave the shop its name – ganthe is Hindi for bell. Her favourite sweet is sold today at $9 per kilogram.

But you may want to tuck your halva in your pocket and keep walking, for the treats at your next destination must be eaten fresh and hot to be experienced in their true, insulin-coma-inducing glory. Keep walking in the same westward direction, past the Sikh gurdwara (where, as with any Sikh temple, they will take you in and give you a hot meal and place to sleep, regardless of your faith, should you require). About 10 paces later, on the corner, is a tiny stand where the sole sign exhorts you to pay first before you collect your sweets. It's shop #130, the self-described Old Famous Jelabi Weallah. At the back of the closet-sized shop, the jelabi maker sits cross-legged on a stool, above a vast vat of sizzling ghee atop a propane burner. He holds a muslin sack with a hole cut in the corner, full of batter made of flour, sugar and egg. With a swirling motion of his wrist, he spins coils of batter into the oil where they form tight rounds. He flips them, flips them again, and a minute later lifts them golden from the ghee and plunges them into the adjoining vat of sugar syrup. Then just as quickly he flips them out again and – if your timing is right – onto a small foil plate. Mostly Delhiwallahs buy them by the kilogram ($7). They are crisp and airy and shockingly sweet.

“I'm the third generation,” owner Kailash Jain boasts. “The recipe is a secret, and I don't tell anyone.” Ms. Husain, who has made careful study of the issue, believes that his jelabi are the best in the city. Possibly anywhere.

To walk off the jelabi, hang a right at the shop off Chandni Chowk and plunge into the markets. The streets will twist and turn a bit, but keep to your general southerly direction and just ask anyone for directions to the Jama Masjid. This is the largest mosque in Asia; completed in 1656, it holds 10,000 people for Friday prayers. If you're not hungry again just yet, then check your shoes at the door and have a wander around inside.

Leave the mosque through the opposite side – you will find yourself on a wider street beneath a gate labelled “No. 1.” A small street will stretch north in front of you. Go about four metres and look for a tiny alleyway on your left. Can't spot it? Don't panic – just say the word Karim's. In fact, you probably won't get past the first syllable, and everyone on the street will point you through the crevice in the wall that leads to one of Delhi's most famous restaurants.

The founder of Karim's was a chef in the Moghul court who lost his job and fled for his life in 1857, the year of the Indian Rebellion, when the last Mughal king, Bahadur Shah Zafar, was dethroned. Haji Karimuddin moved to a small town in Uttar Pradesh in disguise, and scrambled for a way to make a living, but secretly passed the secrets of imperial cuisine on to his son. By 1911, a new generation thought it was safe to go back to Delhi, where a festival was being held to celebrate the coronation of King George V. He began with a roadside stand selling just two items, but within a couple of years had established a restaurant with the family name outside the gates of the great mosque, with the slogan “Serving royal food to the common man.”

Karim's has a gritty, honest charm. On one side of the Ping-Pong-table-size courtyard is a small, raised room where bakers sit cross-legged rolling out and baking naan flatbread. Across from them is the charcoal grill where a cook uses a sheet of cardboard to flame coals beneath a dozen kinds of grilling kebabs. Customers are ushered to Formica tables in one of four rabbit-warren dining rooms, lit by fluorescent strips. Food comes quickly, served up by a battalion of worse-for-wear waiters: the spicy kebabs that the emperor loved best. Tender lamb ishtu, made with whole spices in thick gravy. And butter chicken – marinated in yogurt, cooked, then coated in butter and served in thick tomato sauce that a succession of diners exclaims is the best they have ever had anywhere. The naan is puffy, hot and buttery. Follow it with a small clay dish of firni (rice pudding) and a cup of chai. Dinner for two costs only about $8.

“Here, food became aromatic and wonderful, because it had the patronage of royalty,” says Ms. Husain, ordering up just one more kind of kebab for visitors, and then holding forth on which of its spices came from which part of the empire.

Four doors from Karim's, back toward the mosque, stands a rival restaurant, Al-Jawahar. It does not have Karim's royal past, nor the venerable reputation – but in Ms. Husain's carefully considered opinion its kebab and its parantha are in fact more authentic and even better. While Karim's sometimes draws in the odd tourist, at Al-Jawahar you will dine surrounded by sprawling Delhi families and tables full of bickering Koranic scholars.

If you can possibly bear the idea of eating any more, head back toward the street that runs along the mosque. In either direction, come nightfall, dozens of tiny dhaba fire up their grills: There is spicy chicken, roasted or fried, a particular favourite of Delhiwallahs; a variety of stuffed and fried breads; sugar cane juice, and dhuwan wali kheer, a smoked rice pudding.

Ms. Husain shakes her head at the jostling crowds and the dirt in the streets, the decrepit buildings and shrilling car horns. But when she samples from the roadside stands, she gives a brisk nod of approval. “It's authentic here,” she says. “It tastes like it used to.”