The day I discovered Indian Street Food

I was roaming the busy streets of Tourist Club Area in search of a more "authentic yoga experience", flip-flopping away through garbage and lunch leftovers scattered all over sidewalks (really, something you never get used to even after living for a year in the UAE - here people generally '"litter" where they eat'), when I came upon a window display of the kind of food I've never seen before: they were mostly pastries, but not the common pastries of Abu Dhabi. Intrigued, I decided to give it a try after my yoga class, which, by the way, was a bit too authentic for my liking. But when I came up to the window again, I realized that I didn't even know what to order: there wasn't a word of English, either written or spoken.

Luckily, I saw an Indian woman smiling at me (and probably wondering if I'm mentally challenged) so I asked her to help me order something. First thing she asked was whether I like spicy or not. I immediately remembered the spicy tom yom soup that I once had on a street in Thailand that was so spicy that my eyes watered.
"A little spicy is okay", I told her.

She was there with her husband and three kids having a "street food night" and her youngest son, sitting on top of a table, helped translate for me. First, the chef behind the window handed me a small metal bowl with a ball of pastry swimming in some kind of vegetable soup. It turned out to be a "panipuri", "pani" for water and "puri" for a hollowed out fried crisp.

Surprisingly it was very light and so delicious! It's filling consisted of tamarind water, onions, chickpeas and something spicy: a distant relative of salsa on a tortilla chip (and a perfect post-workout snack!). The chef handed me another one with his bare hand (my American germaphobic mind freaked out a little) that was stuffed with similar ingredients but without the water, which made it somewhat bland. Then he passed on a plate of chaat to the lady and she handed me a spoon, inviting her family to join too. I took a few bites and decided it was rude of me to dig into their dinner like that, so I asked them to order something else for me to take home. Once the chef handed me a paper bag of samosas for the Frenchie and I paid my 7 dirhams (less than $2) I thanked the family and flip-flopped back home. Oh, the samosas were a thousand times better than Lulu's! ;)