Azmi Restaurant

Address 168/170 Norris Rd (off Serangoon Rd) Thye Chong Coffee Shop

Opening Hours 7am-10pm daily

Chapati, is comfort food for millions around the world. It’s food that one eats without thinking about it. Every cell in the body knows exactly what to expect when comfort food sets in. Much like how the Draco-like food reviewer Anton Ego was reduced to hide behind the comfort of his childhood security blanket when a rat cooked him a soulful meal of Ratatouille in the movie of the same name.

I had my first chapati meal as a kid of nine, when, a little group of us, like puppies agog, were exploring the little nooks and crannies around St Michael’s School at Thomson Road (we skipped a very boring morning lesson that fateful day). We chanced across what looked like a roti prata stall near Jalan Besar (don’t ask me how we wondered so far off. But it had to do with how some mathematics formula made our little minds wonder off. We had to go on a search mission for it).

We ordered, hungry and knowing full well what to expect. After three bites, we all felt it tasted bland and pronounced it a bad prata joint ( I had no idea what the pledge was all about but was suspicious of how they spelt roti prata - C-h-a-p-a-t-t-i.). It was my first attempt at rating an eatery. It tasted like brown edible vanguard sheets with some burnt edges- hard, floppy, chewy and that they forgot the salt. I hated it. In our minds, it ranked as bad as the mathematics class. We now have two things not to look forward to in the mornings.

Fast forward fifteen years. And as a consumer, I had chosen to avoid roti prata in that place all those time (mathematics lessons were not consumerables, so I could not choose). Then an old Indian army mate took me for a roti meal in Little India and it was dejavu. It was like that nightmare roti prata I had fifteen years earlier, except, this time, we did not have to go AWOL and trek there from base camp in Mandai. Also, this time, the meal was much more agreeable to me. The breads came very hot off the tawa (cast iron pan) and it was soft and nicely dusted with flour and was not oily. We had a bowl of chicken and dhal curry. With just fingers, I tore so easily into the bread and held it to pick up pieces of chicken. This time, I liked it. “I didn’t know you like chapati” was Raj’s response, which prompted a “I didn’t know too, but then I didn’t know that this is chapati.”, from me. I always thought chapati was a fancy roti prata, like how one version was done with onions and eggs then.

Fast forward, ten years later and into the nineties. Research for our food guide then led me to this same stall in Serangoon Road. It was the only recommendation for chapati. In an attempt to verify the quality, I tried chapatis from some other stalls in Little India. It brought me back to my makan nightmare as a nine year old school absentee.

Azmi Restaurant has been churning out nothing but chapatis since the sixties. It is the same operation in the same stall since then. About a hundred kilograms of whole wheat flour is mixed each day with just water by a dough specialist. Another expert does nothing, but kneads and rolls it into thin eight inch circles. Another pan fries and churn out more then one thousand pieces each day. He has a special contraction which he uses to flip and puff up the breads and then set it down. Not a drop of oil is used in the process. Burning is controlled by powdering the hot tawa with more whole wheat flour. So hot, that the fryer drapes himself in a towel to ward the heat off.

Chapati towel man

“Breads like these has its origins in Afghanistan,” says boss Mr Abuzer Alam, “it was modified to become things like naans, roti prata and dosais”. He came here from India five years ago to help out his late father who passed on in 2006. In Uttar Pradesh, in north India, where his family hails from, chapatis are a staple as “it fills up better than rice and is cheaper, so the peasant farmers like it with simple vegetable dhal curry”. But take one look at the curry menu at Azmi’s and you can see the effects of affluence. It is at least fifteen long and ranges from chicken, meat, meat balls, liver, potatoes, fish and of course the good old dhal. All very spicy and not too heavy in the coconut milk department. It does not even mention chapati nor give you an idea how much it cost. “Many of my customers,” Mr Alam reveals, “especially the Chinese, don’t even bother to ask how much the roti is. They only ask how much the chicken and mutton curry is.”

Much like how one never asks the price of a kosong (plain) prata is in Singapore.Very paiseh (embarrassing). I think it is some mild symptoms of the disease of affluence here. Or could it be that nobody can expect simple comfort food to be unaffordable.