The Retro Oven Cooks World-Class Kulchas

March Six Word Photo Story Challenge: “Retro or Old”

Retro oven’s pride: the famous kulchas

I traveled to Amritsar recently. It is a place known for its food, especially fish, chicken, paranthas (Indian stuffed bread), and Kulchas (another form of bread).

Amritsar has a special art of making kulchas that are not made anywhere else in India.

It is a special technique. It can only be made in a traditional tandoor, a cylindrical clay oven in which food is cooked over charcoal.

This type of clay oven used to be in every home before the facilities of natural gas and electricity came to cook food.

It is a retro way of cooking and in villages where there is abject poverty, it is still used. Most others have moved on to better cooking methods.

I told our travel agent that I was not going out of Amritsar before I ate the famous tandoori kulchas of Anritsar.

The next day the car came to pick us up. I asked him where he was taking us for lunch and he said that he would take us to the All India Famous Kulcha restaurant.

When we reached there, the first moment was disappointing because it was a ramshackle, run-down place, just the same even after a decade.

The chairs were rickety and so was the table but there was a loud cheer of welcome by the waiter and a wonderful attitude toward serving us.

We asked him to clean the place, and in a jiffy, it was done. In his cheerful voice, he said “I will just serve you with the famous kulchas and Channas/chickpeas and chutney.”

Waiving his hand like a magic wand he brought full plates and spoons and glasses and asked us if he should serve us cold drinks like Coke, Soda, Fanta, or Limca.

We all said that it would be nice to be served the drinks with the food.

Next, he waved his magic wand and brought hot kulchas that you saw being cooked in the retro clay oven with the chickpeas and the chutney.

Everyone forgot the discomfort of the half-broken place as it was full anyway. He was serving so many people with a smile.

All of us savored it, enjoyed it, and loved it. We ate slowly, enjoying every morsel.

They were indeed something we had never eaten before. They were crisp and filled with potatoes and very tasty. All this because it was cooked in a retro clay oven.

Thank you dear Mary Chang Story Writer, Sandi Parsons, Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles for the prompt on retro or old.

©Dr. Preeti Singh, 2024.