Okay, let’s admit it, Mysore pak is not street food. This rich, melt-in-mouth dish that recently ranked 14th on a worldwide list of 50 best street-food sweets compiled by Croatian magazine Taste Atlas was created for the Maharaja of Mysore, Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV 90 years ago. Made first at the Amba Vilas Palace with generous amounts of ghee, sugar, gram flour, it was the result of head chef Kakasura Madappa’s quest to make something unusual for the Maharaja. The Maharaja loved it so much that he asked Madappa to open a sweet shop outside the premises of the palace. 

The recipe has been fine-tuned and altered through the years but the original sweet is still available at Guru Sweets in Devaraja Market run by Kumar and Shivanand, great-grandsons of Madappa. “Made with pure, local ghee and no preservatives, there is nothing like the original and you’d know the difference only when you taste it,” says Mysore-born Chembur resident Sanjay P, who keeps carefully rationing it from the stock bought by visiting friends and family until it is replenished. Sunday mid-day asked around for recommendations from readers.