No onions in your favourite snacks

“This kebab place I frequent has now replaced onions with cabbage in the salads. And the saddest thing is that my favourite panipuri vendor has stopped asking customers if they want onions while handing out the bowls, of late.”
- Sudhanshu Ramteke, city-based comedian
“An Indian restaurant recently served us cabbage and carrot julienne instead of the regular onion and nimboo plate.How strange!”
- Chinmayi Bhambure, content creator, Pune
“So this restaurant served us mooli marinated in vinegar. There was no sign of onions on the place. Too bad!”
- Chetan Gusani, photographer, Mumbai
Chances are you’ve already had a similar experience. While the price of onion, which had gone up recently, has come down a bit, the vegetable is being replaced with ‘no-so-pleasant’ ingredients by eateries and restaurant owners and the absence of it is leaving everyone teary-eyed. While diners are complaining about missing kanda in their bhajjis and salads; eateries and roadside joints are finding ways to save their money - by either stopping to sell items that need onion in it or by simply replacing them with another ingredient.
“My staff ordered bhajjis for our evening snack, and when I took the first bite of it, I thought something was off. I could only feel the taste of besan mixed with masalas like red chilli and coriander in my mouth. So I asked him what type of bhajji he had ordered. And he said, ‘Kanda bhajji.’ ‘But there’s no onion in this bhajji,’ I asked. To which he answered, ‘Kya Pata? Bahut mehenga hai karke nahin dala lagta hai.’ I am not having onion bhajjis until the prices are normal again," Urvi Bheda, an entrepreneur from Pune.
Gajendra Patil, an owner of a tea stall and bhajji centre in Aundh, says selling khanda bhajji after the prices went higher, was literally burning a hole in his pocket. Therefore, he decided to serve other snacks instead. “Kanda bajji banana abhi band kiya hai. Pyaaz kaafi mehenga ho gaya hai. For the last two weeks I have been serving vada pav and bread pakora as these dishes do not need onion in their preparation. We have been selling kanda bhajji for over 5 years now and people really enjoyed our bhajji with tea, but now we cannot afford to buy onions. Customers won’t pay us if we increased the price, which means that we would suffer loses. Hence, we are giving kanda bhajji a skip for a while,” says Gajendra. And, those ‘claiming’ be to still selling the snack are receiving a lot of flak from their customers. “Yes, we have cut down on the amount of onion we used in the bhajjis because of the price hike, but customers are being difficult. When they take a bite or two, they go like, ‘Yeh toh sirf besan hai, isme pyaaz kahan hain?’ We try to convince them that we have added onions, but they don’t listen to us,” says a concerned Vaibhav Bhalerao, a street vendor from FC Road.
Another option that these street vendors are opting for is making cabbage pakoras instead of onion pakoras as cabbage is cheaper than the onion. “But who eats cabbage pakoras? I am simply hating this version. They better start making what they made earlier, else nobody will come to their stall,” says Rachna Gandhi, an HR professional from Pimpri.
Students and young office goers who frequent to these eateries in Koregaon Park for their regular dose of egg bhurji and kanda pohe are disappointed that their favourite egg bhurji spots are making the bhurji without onion or adding cabbage leaves to it. To add to their woes, the generous garnishing of chopped onion on top is missing from their pohe. “What’s an egg bhurji without onions! It tastes incomplete, but the owner of the stall is adamant that he won’t use onions for the time being. After many arguments, although he agreed to add onions, he is stern that he would charge extra for the ‘special’ egg bhurji. This is not fair. It sounds like ‘Itne paise mein itna hi milega!” exclaims Sania Nalawade, student. Harish Sharma, who owns the eatery defends, “Buying onions in large quantities is getting tougher for us by the day. We have to curtain the use of onion in the snacks we serve. Customers should either understand or be willing to pay extra,” he asserts. In fact, a pohe centre in the area is now charging Rs 5 extra if you ask for pohe with an onion garnishing.
Many eateries and restaurants buy onions from a wholesale market at a wholesale price, but currently, the market has a dearth of onions hence a huge shortage of supply and price hike. This is forcing eatery and restaurant owners to increase the price of the dishes or worse stop serving free onions.
“I am a regular at this hotel and as a norm they always served a plate full of chaat masala sprinkled onions slices with some lemon along with the main dish. When I visited the place last Monday, I was really taken aback when the server gave me a plate full of thinly-sliced radish and lemons. When asked, he curtly replied, ‘We’ve stopped giving free onions to customers.’ It spoiled my mood,” says Deepak Rawat, an engineer who visits this restaurant in Camp area. When we spoke with Veeral Dhumman, the owner of the restaurant to dig out more, he says, “We’ve been serving our customers onions as appetisers for free for a really long time, but we are not in a position to do that anymore. Around 300 people visit us every day which means 300 plates of onions! I am not apologetic for not serving them free onions. Customers are getting annoyed, but it is time everyone started thinking logically.” Dhumman is soon planning to put up a notice at the entrance of his hotel reading, ‘No free WiFi. No free Onions.’
Rohini Apte and her friend Sailee Sane love to eat their panipuri with chopped onions that panipuri wallas would happily fill their bowls with. But things are different now - they’ve not just stopped offering it, they even refuse to give them even when requested. “We were waiting for the panipuri walla to give us the onions, but surprisingly he started with the panipuri first. We thought he might have forgotten, but no, he did it on purpose. He informed us that he won’t be serving any chopped onions till the prices of onions are normal. We insisted but he refused. In fact, we then checked with a few other sellers too, and all of them have actually stopped giving free onions. It breaks my heart,” says Rohini.