A Culinary Caravan: Following the Flavour Trail from Amritsar to Hyderabad via Damascus

How a light-hearted WhatsApp exchange among retired IAS officers stirred up memories, meals, and the mysterious journey of a kebab that belongs to everywhere—and nowhere.

Author’s Note:

— Karan Bir Singh Sidhu, IAS (Retd.)

This piece began as a playful skirmish in our 1984 batch IAS WhatsApp group—an ongoing culinary contest between Amritsar and Hyderabad, spiced with nostalgia, mischief, and memories of official postings. What started as banter soon simmered into a reflection on the way food travels across cultures, continents, and centuries.
In tracing the journey of the beloved “Shami Kebab”—known in Damascus as the “Hind Kebab”—this essay celebrates not just taste, but the tender, tangled routes through which identity and flavour migrate.

From WhatsApp Banter to a Sizzling Culinary Chronicle

— A gourmet ramble by Karan Bir Singh Sidhu, IAS (Retd.)

It began, as the most flavourful stories often do, with a volley of emojis and some good-natured one-upmanship in the 1984 batch IAS officers’ WhatsApp group. During a lazy mid-morning scroll, I found myself caught in a spirited crossfire of gastronomic patriotism: Madan Gopal—the globe-trotting, quintessential Bengalurean—declaring Amritsar the undisputed food capital of India; Vidyasagar, former Chief Secretary of Telangana, countering with Hyderabad’s culinary supremacy; and the distinguished Jalaj Shrivastava, radiating the casual swagger that only a seasoned UT cadre officer can truly pull off, lobbing zingers about “appetiser paan, digester paan, sleep-inducing paan.” I too joined the melee with a half-playful, wholly controversial claim—that Amritsar’s version of Hyderabadi biryani could out-fluff anything simmered in the erstwhile Nizam’s kitchen. Somewhere between the laughter and the longings, a sumptuous idea began to simmer.

Amritsar: Where Faith Meets Flame

Turn any Amritsari corner at dawn, and the air already thrumps with sizzle and chant. After an early-morning ardaas at the Golden Temple, Gyani Di Chah becomes an almost mandatory stop—its briskly poured steel tumblers of cardamom-laced tea reviving the spirit as much as the senses. Nearby, kulcha bakers coax doughy discs against red-hot tandoor walls; ghee oozes, cumin crackles, and the smoky perfume threads through the narrow galis like a sacred hymn. By noon, the city is a carnival of crusts: batter-fried Amritsari machhi wearing a snow-white choga of ajwain-laced gram flour, kebab skewers weeping fragrant fat onto glowing coals, and copper degchis slowly surrendering their secrets to the grace of time. Finish, if you dare, with a sumptuous kulfi-falooda, whose frosted saffron pearls make light work of even the most bureaucratic belly.

Hyderabad: Spice in a Bespoke Sherwani

Fly south and the Deccan plains open into Hyderabad’s royal banquet. Here biryani is no mere rice-and-meat liaison; it is courtly intrigue sealed under a doughy purdah, every grain perfumed with kewra, every morsel of mutton resigned happily to its aromatic fate. As twilight spreads a violet blush over Charminar, cauldrons of haleem thicken to velvet, their ghee pools glinting like minted gold coins. Dessert? A slice of double-ka-meetha—cardamom-soaked toast luxuriating in thickened milk—soft enough to be negotiated with a glance.

So, which city wears the crown? I propose a plea of double jeopardy and keep both on the throne. Yet the debate served a higher purpose: it steered our reverie toward a kebab whose identity crisis is more tantalising than any inter-city rivalry.

Shami or Hind? A Kebab Takes the Silk Road

Picture minced lamb or goat slow-braised with chana dal until meat and lentil concede their differences and merge into silken paste. Ginger, green chillies, and a fistful of fresh mint pirouette through the mixture; a dash of garam masala supplies bass notes, while eggs bind the melody. Patties are shaped, patted like warm clay tablets, then shallow-fried to a russet crust that would make the Indus bricks blush.

In Lucknow and Ludhiana we call this marvel Shami Kebab, “Shami” being the adjective derivative for Shaam—the Arabic term for Greater Syria. The name nods to medieval spice routes, to soldiers of fortune and pilgrims who ferried recipes between Damascus and the sub-continent.

Yet stroll through the labyrinthine souks of Damascus today, ask for the same spiced patty, and you will be handed Kebab al-Hindi—literally Indian Kebab. The circle is complete, the kebab having made the gastronomic pilgrimage from Levant to Hind and back, accruing new adjectives like stamps on a diplomat’s passport. Culinary irony has rarely tasted so good.

The Alchemy of Exchange

This ping-pong of nomenclature reminds us that recipes are the original open-source code: forked, tweaked, re-published, adored. The sub-continent’s take on the kebab swapped pine nuts for split lentils, introduced a fistful of frenetic chillies, and christened the result with a respectful nod to its presumed Syrian lineage. Damascus, in turn, tasted the exuberant spices and baptised it Hind. Between those two christenings lies a millennium of caravans, coastal fleets, exiles, emperors, and—let’s be honest—greedy gourmets just like us.

A Final Toast (and a Digestive Paan)

So here’s to WhatsApp chatter that morphs into midnight cravings; to Amritsar’s audacious bravery with ghee and Hyderabad’s poetry in rice; to kebabs that refuse to pledge allegiance to one flag; and to the splendid fact that a bureaucrat’s pen can moonlight as a carving knife when the subject turns to food.

Next time the group pings, I shall forward this chronicle—seasoned with nostalgia, garnished with etymology, and slow-cooked in civic camaraderie. May it make the readers’ mouths water and their passports itch. Until then, I leave you with a whisper of sizzling fat and a promise: wherever you stand on the Amritsar versus Hyderabad debate, a platter of Shami-Hind kebabs will always be bipartisan bliss.

Footnote

Whether the Reshami Kebabs at Khan Chacha—Lutyens’ Delhi’s enduring favourite for diplomatic appetites and midnight cravings—are so called because they evolved along the ancient Silk Route, or because they melt on the tongue with the buttery grace of Resham (silk, in English), the jury is still out. Perhaps both. Either way, geopolitics never tasted this smooth.