Desi Chaat House provides some much–needed diversity to the campus Indian food scene. All too often, your average Indian buffet leaves you feeling stuffed to the brim — so much so that the samosa you forced down might cause you to burst. Just a couple blocks further than the New Delhis and Sitars, there exists a new breed of Indian joint: Desi Chaat House.
For those of you unfamiliar with trends and customs of South Asian street food, chaat is a type of quick service Indian food. It combines influences of other Asian cultures, resulting in a unique blending of flavors and textures. If you’ve ever dipped your french fries in a chocolate milkshake or eaten M&Ms with your popcorn, you understand the strange and unexplainable beauty of the nontraditional mixture. Chaats mix the sweet with the salty, the hot with the cold and the soft with the crunchy in a flavor experience you have to taste to believe.
The samosa chaat ($5.99) is one of the restaurant’s recommended dishes, and it’s not hard to see why. This dish features a potato samosa surrounded by spiced potatoes, chickpeas, crunchy toppings, yogurt sauce and hot sauce and is truly mouth–watering. The lamb chaat ($6.99) is another popular dish, for good reason: the lamb is cooked well and is really tasty, and the various flavors added to it only enhance the experience. We also tried the veggie cutlet wrap ($3.99), which wasn’t our favorite. The cutlet itself tasted great, but the wrap and sauces on top masked its flavor and didn’t enhance it like the samosa and lamb dishes. Definitely bring a friend and order a few different chaats so you can try a little bit of everything.
We decided to check out the foreign sodas and pre–made lassis to go with our food. The mango lassi ($2.99) is nicely sweet and goes with a savory chaat, or is an awesome snack/dessert on its own. The fruit chaat ($4.99) makes a great dessert, too. This dish consists of fresh tropical fruit mixed with chickpeas and potatoes, and is topped with sweet mango sauces. It may sound strange, but that’s the beauty of it all. Chaat House also offers homemade ice cream ($3.99) that the owner will let you sample for free if he’s trying out a new flavor, but beware of strange flavor combinations — the lavender ice cream he was experimenting with tasted kind of like shampoo.
Desi Chaat House is located at 42nd and Baltimore streets, which may seem a bit too far for some Penn bubble inhabitants, but the walk there could only feel dangerous if you’re threatened by hipsters and middle–aged men walking their tiny dogs. Chaat House’s facade isn’t all that impressive — the restaurant itself has only four small tables — so eat outside if it’s a nice day, carry–out to the nearby Clark Park if it’s a really nice day or call ahead and bring it home if it’s ugly out. The restaurant offers lots of online special offers; make sure you ask for the free soda with any chaat or like them on Facebook for a free cocktail with your order.
Desi Chaat House
501 S. 42nd Street
(215) 386-1999
Don’t Miss: Samosa Chaat
Skip This: Veggie Wrap
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