The newly opened Imly at Rajendra Place in the shape of a long train is serving the best of Indian street food in a hygienic environment. Owner Varun Puri tells Shrabasti Mallik that they are not only sourcing the ingredients from respective states but also getting chefs from them
It is a train. literally, a 250 ft long trundler with rolling wheels, brightly-lit windows and a chugging engine (sans smoke though) at the heart of the Rajendra Place market. This locomotive named Imly is ready to take you on a gastronomic journey of street food across India be it — golgappa, pav bhaji, sev puri or dosa.
Varun Puri and Vivek Bhargava, who took their cafe lights Camera Action - Air Bar to a high street opened Imly with a vision to serve delicious and authentic street food from India under one roof. “That too in a pleasant, congenial and captivating ambience without increasing the burden on your pocket,” said Puri. The interior is replete with bunkers (found in trains for holding luggage) and several lCDs which run the footage of a landscape as seen from inside a moving train — everything to give you the feel of a real train journey.
Imly is very chatpata, tangy , sweet and quirky. It is key ingredient to make chaats and chutneys. “We have done fusion with street food. Imly is chatpata stopover for all the families and specially kids. Imly is the best word to connect our concept and food with people,” Puri described.
Our tour of India’s finest street food started with green coconut water served fresh in the coconut itself. That’s how its served on the streets, rightIJ The sev puri came in a small toy caravan, illustrating that the owners have invested as much in hygiene and decor as much as they have in presentation.
“Customers assess food with eyes first and then pick up a spoon to eat. Social media is becoming very powerful nowadays documenting food travels all over the world through images and presentation. It is very important for a restaurateur to present the food in a very quirky and amazing way,” explained Puri. If one craves visual delight mixed with a quirky twist, try out their golgappa chaat which comes to the table on a four-seater Ferris wheel.
The best part of the food at Imly is that no experiments are done on the dishes. According to Puri, “We have retained the flavours of the place of origin. We serve the pav bhaji the same way they do it in Bombay. We serve the dosa on a banana leaf. Same vendors and chefs are producing dishes in Imly to give the nostalgic taste and authentication.”
We dug into the Pune special sandwich stuffed with veggies and cheese and so it was grilled to perfection retaining the moisture inside. To wash down all of these sumptuous bites, Puri gave us watermelon and orange juice served in a bamboo shaped container, and pineapple and pomegranate juice served in a steel lota. The most quirky drink that came to us was the green apple shikanji served in an original banta bottle.
India’s street food is as diverse as the places they belong to. So it undoubtedly would be a mammoth task to keep up the distinct flavours. Puri agreed and told us that it was lot difficult to get this authentication in Imly because it sources ingredients from the native state. “We follow the same cooking techniques, ingredients, culinary habits and most important secrets of the same place,” he added.
Our train then took us to South India where we halted for the Imly special dosa (which came in a banana leaf plate). The dosa came in small rolls accompanied with sambar, coconut chutney, mint chutney and garlic chutney. When Imly’s on-board South Indian chef rolled out the longest paper dosa, we realised how true the restaurant is about its chain food (dosas are normally that long in the South and are equally light and crisp without hardening or wilting).
Imly taught us that even street food can have a main course when it served us Parsi berry pulao. If not anything, the berries and the nuts were more delectable than the rice, which was a little bland. With the mewa cake, which was served in a wooden box with a lid (which looked like a jewellery box), we reached our destination. It was soft, fluffy wilt just about the right amount of sweetness.
As of now Imly is serving some of the popular steer foods of Delhi, Bangalore, Pune, Agra and towns of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madras, Punjab and Agra, and the owners plan to add a city every three months and Hyderabad and Indore are next on the list.
Imly believes in CSR as it treats underprivileged kids in collaboration with CRY.