How To Be Great In Bread

India is upping its sandwich game. Move past the sourdough clichés and gourmet fillings to see what's holding it together

- VIR SANGHVI

It is not often that the same food trend occurs at two different levels simultaneously. Most times, what happens on the street happens on its own. And the top end of the market follows its own rules before appropriating some of the street's better ideas.

But these days, at both, the top and the bottom ends of the market, there are two distinct but similar sandwich booms occurring. And at both levels, there is an element of the ridiculous tagged on to each boom.

The boom at street level is easy to see. It is most visible in Western India. It was there, after all, that the hamburger bun, the pao and a strange hybrid between the two, became the basis for many new sandwiches.

The boom has now spread beyond its original home. Three elements have combined to form the basis of new street food snacks and quick lunches at thelewallah joints all over India: eggs, cheese and basic white bread.

If you travel through Himachal for instance, you will find guys making omelette sandwiches with shop-bought bread. You will find variations on this theme in such cities as Surat, where the Bhai Bhai Omelette centre is something of a tourist magnet. When they want to tart the sandwiches up, they use Amul cheese.

And then there is the boom at the top end. For a long time, Indians stuck with the British tradition of making sandwiches with untoasted bread and filling them with such ingredients as ham or chicken or cheese, chutney or tomato-cucumber for vegetarians.