Once upon a time a Punjabi boy visited Manikaran, a holy hamlet of India that was especially venerated by followers of Sikhism. When the boy was hungry he found a local tea stall. He bit into the steamy, crispy layers of a stuffed flatbread and his life was transformed forevermore.

Love at first bite.

The boy returned to the stall the next day, and the next day, and the next year, and the next year.

The paranthas he ate were made from scratch by the hands of Meena, a lovely girl from the villages of Parvati Valley, Himachal Pradesh. Her grin was wide. Her eyes were big and filled with strength and determination, but also kindness. With each flip on the tawa pan her paranthas puffed up to skyscraping heights.

Relevant read: Falling In Love With India’s Finest Aloo Parantha

Meena served her customers with compassion and gave attention to all the details of a good brunch.

20 years later, this boy has grown into a man (all that carb-loading how could he not) and can be found at the same tea stall, occasionally giving a parantha a flip, serving a table, or selling soft serve ice cream by the cone.

A raucous little girl drags him around to play, screaming out of delight. She is his daughter. Meena is her mother.

Meena The Parantha Queen

When you sit down for your first Meena parantha, you simply can’t stop at just one visit.

Meena’s family is based in Manikaran, a noteworthy detail when considering that this is a country where the woman moves to live with her husband’s family on her wedding day, often with a dowry price tag on her head, and remains there for the rest of her life.

Soon this family will travel to Punjab to spend Diwali with Meena’s in-laws. Meena’s son is already there. I imagine this child is in the hands of his grandparents because Meena is pumping out paranthas from 6:30 in the morning till 9 at night, mostly standing.

In the autumn months, sunlight reaches the brinks of her chilly stall for only an hour each day.

An adorable Uncle is Meena’s diligent sidekick. He is a Nepali who is a long-time friend of Meena’s family since his relocation to her birth village.

Together they make a powerful team. He brings fragrant food and condiments to the table with pure grace, announcing what’s what in a voice that melts me.

Uncle’s peace is contagious, but don’t let his angelic demeanor fool you. This man makes a mean masala chai, dutifully adjusting the sweetness to one’s liking.

“Made with love” is thrown around a lot. At this point it’s become another marketing phrase to sell food for profit. However, the paranthas, yogurt, chutney, and assorted pickles of Meena Tea Stall are made on-site from whole foods, taste of home, and are soused with a whole lotta pyaar.

Centrally located in Manikaran, Himachal Pradesh, her stall is marked with hand-painted capital letters on the wall. It is adjacent to the medicine store and across from Rattan firing up The World’s Yummiest Masala Chai.

Paranthas are described as Indian stuffed flatbreads or pancakes. They are the breakfast staple of the northern half of the country, where rice fades out and wheat is what keeps the people alive.

My month in mythical Manikaran has made me a regular of Meena’s cooking. I usually give a complicated order before grabbing a gray plastic chair, preferably on the edge of the balcony for the optimal people and cow-watching, and sit back to the sizzle of ghee hitting a hot pan.

In the beginning I went for the most exemplary North Indian breakfast: aloo parantha (potato-stuffed flatbread), pickles, curd (the English word for ‘yogurt’ in India), and masala chai.

The parantha always arrives sliced into quarters, completely blanketing its metal plate.

Two chubby pots containing complimentary chutney and pickled vegetables complete the table top aesthetic. The refreshing chutney is tomato and chili based, looking and tasting like a typical (hot) Mexican salsa. While I haven’t encountered such a chutney in India before, pickles are all too familiar as they invariably show up on a parantha plate. Meena’s pickles are a tangy, oiled assortment of mangoes, cauliflower, carrots, and whatever else she was in the mood for when she made that batch.

Curd is another indispensable parantha pairing. Meena’s curd cuts the spice, adds a smooth texture, and perfects the flavor profile. It’s soft like a cloud and icy cold. She makes seven kilos of it every day.

The curd and chai are made from creamy milk sourced from the cows of the surrounding villages, delivered fresh each morning.

I pick up a blazing slab of parantha like it’s pizza. It somehow tastes like pizza too, and is certainly better than any “pizza” I’ve had during my 10.5 months in India.

Side note: there actually exists a Napolitanen pizza that’s just a dough base topped with potato wedges and I only know this because I have eaten it in Naples and it has forever engrained itself into the timeline of my childhood.

I bend the slice in half and dab it in the toppings before garnishing the incoming bite with a dollop of curd. Sometimes I dollop the chutney and dollop more curd. Locals rip and dip. Others spread on the toppings like it’s jam on toast, and throw a chunk of omelette on top.

It doesn’t matter because in the end we are all stuffing our faces into some seriously carby glory.

As I dined by myself one afternoon, a juicy slice of persimmon was placed in front of me. Sometimes Meena would send me home with the whole fruit, with no waiting time for it to ripen because it would be bursting at the seams. The persimmons were sweet like honey, grown in her mother’s garden in a sunny village located a dozen kilometers away.

I often would leave her with bliss balls and chocolate tahini slices when I managed to make them between all the power cuts. In retaliation I got a handful of sweet crumbles made from dried fruits and local ghee.

Then one day Meena interjected that maybe every day a potato parantha gets boring. She politely added that she also offers paneer pyaz paranthas and omelettes with toasted brown bread. She even does an egg parantha, where she beats two eggs, slices open a classic potato parantha mid-fry on the fired up pan, and slides in the eggs with all the elegance in the world.

This disclosure changed everything.

The paneer pyaz became my new go-to. Flatbread stuffed with Indian cheese and onions and green chilies. It is dangerously packed with paneer, which gives it *such* a good chew.

Sometimes I’d have an omelette, a foamy lassi, or her “home food” dinner which ought to be requested several hours in advance. Home food takes the form of whatever Meena is feeling that day, whether it’s a wholesome dal-based thali or pleasurable palak paneer.

She always stole glances at us to check if we were enjoying her cooking, which we absolutely always were.

One time Meena bought gobi, or cauliflower, from the market just because I asked for a cauli flatbread.

Yet at the bottom of all this pancake prattle, there’s something so perfect about the aloo parantha. I can’t explain it, because it’s the counterintuitive combo of carbs stuffed with carbs. I can only repeat: it’s the lifeblood of North India.

Thus The World’s Best Parantha* oscillates between Meena’s aloo and paneer pyaz paranthas.

Remember, these pancakes practically gave this marvelous woman her babies.

Meena Tea Stall Menu

Prices given in Indian rupees.

Aloo parantha (potato)– 40
Paneer pyaz parantha (cheese onion)– 70
Egg parantha (potatoes and eggs)– 70
Fry in ghee– 10 extra
Dahi (plain yogurt)– 20
Omelette (with tomatoes and onion)– 30
Omelette with brown bread or bun– 50
Toast with butter or jam– 30
Home food dinner– 80-150
Masala chai– 10
Nescafe– 40
Lassi– 30
Cream roll– 5
Fan biscuit– 5

Special thanks to my companions for introducing me to Meena and her feasts. They come to Manikaran every year from far away, visiting Meena’s stall every day for the heartiest of breakfasts.

*2021 Update

After Falling In Love With India’s Finest Aloo Parantha, I have reallocated The World’s Best Parantha (the original name of this post) to Vikram in Macleod Ganj, Dharmshala, Himachal Pradesh. The decision was difficult but too true to ignore.

Meena is still undoubtly a queen. Her P³, or paneer pyaz parantha, is in it’s own league.

Meena has new dining furniture and a flat-screen TV for the first time in 20 years.

After stomach troubles from eating at stalls and not knowing which is the culprit, I have been avoiding chutneys everywhere, including Meena’s.