There are an estimated 4,000 restaurants in San Francisco collectively serving up tens of thousands of dishes. For Gazetteer SF, food enthusiast and man-about-town Omar Mamoon is recommending the best ones. This is Order Up.
My parents immigrated to Southern California from Myanmar in 1979, but they’re ethnically Gujarati; as a result, I grew up eating equal parts Burmese food, Indian food, and Del Taco. While I devoured most savory dishes from my family’s more foreign side like fragrant fluffy biryanis and nasal-clearing spicy shrimp curries, when it came to desserts, I couldn’t really get into it. Not to paint with too broad of a brush, but I found the sweets my parents brought home from Artesia’s Little India neighborhood too sweet, especially the thick, sticky, bright orange syrup-soaked jalebi. I always thought I hated these funnel cake-esque cavity-causers.
That is, until I tried the version at the three-month-old Jalebi Street on Haight Street.
Whereas the stuff my folks procured came cold or room temperature in oil-stained pale pink takeaway cake boxes, the ones at Jalebi Street are made fresh-to-order and served warm on a baby blue platter. They’re also shaped into smaller and thinner spirals, which make them less cloyingly sacrine
“When it’s thick it soaks up more syrup and it’s sweeter,” says Sonu “Sam” Bhamu, who started Jalebi Street as a pop-up in Sunnyvale back in 2021.
Bhamu’s jalebi — like the ones I grew up with — are orange colored; however, the hue doesn’t come from food coloring, but from thin threads of saffron that perfume and stain the simple syrup. He also serves it up with a side of rabri, a cold, creamy cardamom-infused reduced milk that you can dip the hot jalebi into. I’ve never had anything like it.
“You find it in the north,” says Bhamu, who hails from the northwestern Indian state of Rajasthan and also spent time in Delhi.
Bhamu immigrated to California when he was in high school. He studied business and economics at UCSD, and, after graduating, helped his father at Bikaner Sweets, a small café in Sunnyvale. Jalebi Street’s pop-up started there before moving to SF in April of this year.
“My father had a different vision and that’s when we decided we’d separate and do our own thing,” says Bhamu.
Lucky for us San Franciscans.
Coming to Jalebi Street just for the jalebi would be foolish when there’s so much more to explore on the savory side of the menu. I’ll always order pani puri if I see it on the appetizer menu — I could eat the potato filled crisps endlessly and I wasn’t disappointed by Bhamu’s. But for your main event, I recommend getting the chole bhature.
Chickpea masala (chole) paired with the pillowy fry bread (bhature) is a common breakfast enjoyed throughout India and varies region to region. The version at Jalebi Street is Delhi style: rich, reduced, and intensely flavorful.
What makes the version at Jalebi Street extra special is Bhamu’s use of dried imported chickpeas from India, which are soaked overnight, pressure cooked until softened, then simmered with fresh toasted and ground spices like cumin, coriander, and cardamom. Black tea leaves are also added to the mix, which impart a darker color, while a puree of tomato, chilies, and onions cooked in oil provide body and base.
The chole bhature comes with slices of raw red onion, a deep fried chile, some achaar (a spicy pickled vegetable condiment) made in-house, and a lemon wedge on the side. To eat it, simply tear a piece off of the bhature and make a pocket, scoop in some chole, give a good squeeze of the citrus juice to brighten it up. I like to break it up with bites of the pickle, chile, and onion — there are no rules here. But if you can, use your hands: they’re the best utensils.
