Chaat Walla is serving Indian street food at Sum Tea House in University City this week

The pop-up’s dosas and bhel will be available on July 25 and July 27

Chaat Walla will be setting up shop at Sum Tea House in University City on July 25 and July 27, giving fans of Indian street food a chance to try a menu of dosas and bhel prepared by the pop-up’s founder, Shrutiben Bhakta. Bhakta is reviving Chaat Walla a year after debuting the pop-up as a graduate project at Blueprint Coffee at High Low in Grand Center. 

Chaat refers both to a spice blend that is commonly used in Indian street food, as well as being an umbrella term for a broad spectrum of Indian snacks. “It literally translates to ‘lick’ in Hindi, as in ‘finger-licking good,’” Bhakta said. “Walla” means vendor. “It’s just paying respect to the street vendors in India, those vendors who are experts at creating those dishes,” she added. “I love chaat, it’s just a key component, it makes me who I am, it makes me feel connected to the people around me and my culture.”

The pop-up will run from 4 to 7 p.m. on July 25 and July 27, with a menu based around two staples of Indian street food: dosas (fermented crepes made from rice and lentils) and bhel (crunchy puffed rice typically combined with chutneys and other assorted ingredients). Bhakta will serve three types of dosa: a plain dosa, a Mexican-inspired corn-filled dosa (also including garlic, cotija, mayo, lime, cilantro and gunpowder masala, a spicy South Indian condiment often eaten with dosas) and a Schezwan (an Indian spelling derived from “Sichuan” or “Szechuan”) dosa filled with Schezwan chutney, crispy veggies and paneer. 

There will be two varieties of bhel: peach or mango, both including roasted peanuts, onion, cilantro, curry leaves, dry chutney, sev (a crunchy noodle-type snack) and chaat masala. “Bhel can be a lot of different things also – it’s crispy, savory, it has some sweet, it has some spicy, some tangy,” Bhakta said. “These are just all classic chaat and street food dishes, but I like to add my own twist to them.”

Bhakta said she likes to create pop-up menus with a view to seasonality, as well as picking up on current food trends. “I really like to do fusion dishes and things like that, so you’ll see some of that in this pop-up menu as well,” she said. Bhakta said Chaat Walla is most inspired by the street food of Mumbai and the Gujarati city of Surat, where she has family ties, but that’s just a part of the story. “I was born in India but I was raised in America, so there’s a lot of different identities that I bring into Chaat Walla,” she said. 

If you miss this pop-up, you can expect to see Chaat Walla popping up at other events and locations in St. Louis over the next few months. Bhakta is finishing her masters program, with plans to become a dietician, but she’s using her formal training in the culinary field to bring her take on Indian street food to St. Louis. Her mom will also be helping her out with the Sum Tea House pop-up.

Follow Chaat Walla on Instagram for more information and the latest on forthcoming pop-ups.