Surat Street Food: What to Eat and When

Food events and tastings in Surat are listed below, but the city's best eating needs no ticket. Start with locho, the steamed gram-flour farsan that belongs to Surat: softer and looser than khaman, served hot in a heap with oil or butter, sev, onion and chutney. Its cousins fill the same breakfast counters, among them khaman, rasawala khaman and sev khamani. Winter is the peak season. From November to late February stalls sell ponk, tender green sorghum roasted in charcoal and eaten with sev, and families cook undhiyu, the slow-cooked mix of winter beans, purple yam, small brinjals and methi muthia that takes its name from 'undhu', upside down, for the earthen pots once buried and fired from above. Late October brings ghari for Chandi Padvo. At Dumas Beach the order is bhajiya, above all the Lashkari tomato bhajiya, with roasted sweetcorn. Elsewhere, Khaudra Gali is a lane of stalls known especially for Mysore dosa, and Rander's lanes become a night market during Ramzan for khawsa, Rangooni paratha and aloo puri. Other Surti names worth knowing are alupuri, surti bhusu and the 'ulta' vada pav.