Beyond-midnight fodder
Food: Tasty
Hygiene: Clean
Service: Prompt
Cost: Cheap
Verdict: 1/4

The seeds were sown in Kolkata, but the roots have spread across the country. Chindian cuisine has become so ubiquitous in our neck of the woods with time that it's like overgrowth that's taken over an undisturbed jungle. It picked up in the Tangra neighbourhood in Kolkata in the 1970s. But before you could say "ni hao", it spread to places like the highway dhabas leading up to Ludhiana, and gave the denizens of even Surat a break from their khandvis in the form of gobi Manchurian. Mumbai, too, has had a long-standing love affair with this hybrid cuisine, thanks mainly to the efforts of people like Nelson Wong who upped and left Tangra to set up a culinary empire in this city. And his legacy is still going strong, with Chindian restaurants continuing to pop up here like advertisements on a music streaming platform that you haven't paid for yet.