42, Trilokinath Marg, Sushanpura, Lalbagh

Karanjeet Singh tells us: “The shop was named by my forebears. After partition, they fled straight to Lucknow and settled here. In the beginning, they set up shop in the verandah right outside. They would sit with chhole in a large platter and halwa in a pan, and customers ate standing up. They had hordes of customers. These premises started functioning from 1964, and my brother and I manage the business now. We start cooking at 6 AM. I cook the chhole myself. The recipe is my father’s. It was he who taught me how to cook them, and also taught me that it is best to earn your living by hard work and honesty. Earlier, we could get good quality raw materials, but today everything is adulterated. We take special care to make sure that the food we serve is not made using adulterated stuff. We make the seasoning for the chhole at home ourselves. All members of the family lend a hand to the work. We have added more dishes to our menu: aloo-kulcha, paneer-kulcha, rajma-chawal, kadhi-chawal and chhole-chawal.”Karanjeet says that he had started helping out his father at the shop when he was in school. He studied up to the 12th grade, after which he has worked full time here itself. “Many prominent people keep turning up here. Recently, we had Golden Baba, who weighs himself under with about 30 kios of gold…”