Amazing India: Magai Paan

Have you ever tasted Magai Paan?
It is probably among the strangest, weirdest food items I ever tasted. It's not really delicious but it is really fascinating. To make it short, Magai Paan is the Indian version of a chewing gum, people eat it after a heavy and spicy lunch to kind of change the taste and keep on chewing for a while.


It is made of maybe 20 or 30 ingredients including the famous betle, it has the betle leaves as well as the nuts, but you can also find there many fragrant things like clove, rose petal, I suspect some other types of nuts (cashew?), many spices and a lot of secret ingredients coming from small bags, tin boxes, plastic bags, etc.

What is amazing is that you are supposed to keep on chewing this thing for a long time and that at least the first few minutes are full of surprise. First it is a really big bite, then it is surprisingly made of many different tastes all very strong and unfamiliar. So you keep on chewing and suddenly there is this new taste happening, maybe you're cracking the clove, or maybe it's a betel nut, you don't really know.


Take a look here, this is the work table of the paan cart - See all the boxes?


This is the man at work:


This is a close up in mid preparation - you can see some of the ingredients:


This is my friend Grish after eating his double bite magai pan:


This is me just before attempting my double bite:


Now you can judge it yourself - Take a look at this movie, it shows the whole preparation for the magai. This is taken from the streets of Bangalore.