Ambala Sweets
With marble floors, mirrored walls, and glass doors with gold handles, Ambala feels like an upscale department store. Sitting tidily in its front window are stacked squares of green pistachio barfi, a milk-based dessert with a fudgelike texture. Other traditional sweets are heaped on the long, gracefully curving counter inside, under immaculate clear-plastic domes. The counter workers give out samples hand over fist, chatting with customers in Hindi, Urdu, and English and happily providing explanations to the uninitiated. “This is number one. This is very fast-selling,” says one, proffering a chunk of habshi halwa–a sticky brown treat made with milk, wheat flour, and cashews. It has the consistency of an underdone brownie, and, like many Indian desserts, tastes alarmingly sweet to the unaccustomed palate. The store carries several variants, including gajar halwa (made with carrots) and anjeer halwa (with figs).
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Ambala sells savory treats, too, including Ambala Mix, a blend of puffed rice, peanuts, cashews, potato chips, and raisins; a spicier variant called ferrari chevda; and dhalmooth, a mix of thin dried noodles, brown lentils, and cashews. Indian and Pakistani customers favor Ambala’s mango, ginger, lemon, and garlic pickles, Hassan says: “Every household uses pickles for dinner or lunch. It’s good for their health.” One of his favorite treats is the dessert called gulab jamun, sweet dough balls fried in ghee and soaked in sugar syrup. Ayurvedic considerations aside, there’s only so much a person past the age of 12 can take of such profound sweetness. Right? “It depends if you’re hooked on it,” he says. “I eat it every day.”
