The Most-Travelled Pastry in the World

The samosa did not begin in India. This is the claim, and it is worth making clearly because it leads somewhere interesting: the story of how a Central Asian fried pastry arrived in the subcontinent, was transformed so completely by Indian cooks that it became unrecognisable from its origins, and is now so thoroughly Indian in identity that calling it anything else requires a history lesson to even make sense.

The tenth-century Arab poet Ishaq al-Mawsili wrote about a fried pastry called sanbusaj, filled with minced meat and nuts, served at the courts of Central Asia and the Middle East. Persian traders carried the same pastry east under the name sambosa. By the time the first Mughal emperors were consolidating their court in the subcontinent in the sixteenth century, the fried filled pastry had been part of the culinary vocabulary of the Persian-speaking world for centuries, and it arrived in India in the luggage, so to speak, of that whole tradition.

What Indian cooks did with it from that point forward is one of the more instructive stories in the history of food. The meat filling was replaced, for a large portion of the population, by a spiced potato and pea filling, which became possible only after the Portuguese brought potatoes to India from the Americas in the sixteenth century. The pastry was refined, thinned, made crispier. The shape, that distinctive three-cornered pocket, was standardised through repetition across millions of kitchens over hundreds of years. The Samosa at Golconda Chimney on 806 Newark Avenue in Jersey City has ancestors in Bukhara and Baghdad, but it tastes like nowhere but India.

The Hyderabadi Hand

Within India, the samosa has regional personalities. The Punjabi version is large, robust, heavily spiced, with a thick pastry and a filling generous with dried mango powder and coriander. The Bengali version is called singara and carries a sweeter, more delicate filling of vegetables and peanuts. The Maharashtrian version sometimes includes onion and beats the dough differently.

The Hyderabadi and Deccani version occupies its own position in this landscape. The pastry is thinner and crisper, fried to a deeper colour so the exterior has a genuine crunch rather than a soft flakiness. The filling reflects the Deccan spice tradition: the potato and peas are seasoned with whole spices, a touch of mint, green chilli kept fresh rather than cooked down into the base. There is a brightness to the interior that contrasts with the dark, crunchy exterior. The overall effect is a samosa that is lighter on the palate than its North Indian counterpart despite being equally substantial.

At Golconda Chimney, the samosa carries this tradition. The pastry is properly thin and the frying is taken seriously, which matters more than it might seem: underfrying produces a pale, oily crust; overfrying produces bitterness. The filling is seasoned with the kind of attention that distinguishes a kitchen that understands its own culinary heritage from one that is simply following a template. For diners at India Square and Indian Square on Newark Avenue who grew up eating samosas in Hyderabad or the Deccan, this version tastes like recognition.

Why the Simplest Things Are the Hardest to Get Right

The samosa is, technically, a simple preparation. Dough, filling, oil. Every element of its construction is visible: there is no sauce to hide behind, no heavy spicing to mask a mediocre base, no elaborate presentation to distract from the quality of the pastry itself. A samosa reveals the kitchen’s standards more directly than almost any other starter on a menu.

Is the pastry uniform in thickness, so it cooks evenly without thick doughy patches? Is the filling properly seasoned throughout, not just on the surface? Is the oil clean and at the right temperature, so the pastry crisps rather than absorbs grease? Is the samosa served immediately, while the exterior is still crackling and the interior is still hot enough to create that brief rush of steam when you break it open? These are not complicated questions to answer in the kitchen, but they require care and attention that not every kitchen extends to a dish it considers ordinary.

Golconda Chimney’s approach to the everyday dishes on its menu is the same as its approach to the showpieces: the standards do not change based on the complexity of the preparation. The samosa is made correctly. The regulars on Newark Avenue across Jersey City and Hudson County have noticed, and they keep ordering it.

At the Table

The samosa at Golconda Chimney arrives with the standard accompaniments: a mint-coriander chutney, sharp and herbal and bright green, and a tamarind chutney, deep and sweet-sour, thick enough to coat. Both are made in-house. The contrast between the crunchy, spiced pastry and the cold, sharp chutneys is one of the most reliable pleasure combinations in Indian cooking, familiar enough to feel like comfort and interesting enough to stay engaging through the whole starter.

It is also, practically, one of the most versatile items at the start of a meal. It works before a biryani. It works before a rich goat preparation. It works alongside a bowl of Dal Shorbha for a light meal, or as the starter before a full Hyderabadi spread for a table of six. For families at Indian Square with a mix of ages and appetites, it is the dish that everyone at the table will eat without negotiation.

For Events Across Hudson County

The samosa is one of the most reliably popular items in Golconda Chimney’s catering offering, available for events of all sizes across Hudson County and the wider New Jersey area. At large gatherings, it functions as a passed starter, a buffet item, or a pre-meal snack, and it disappears consistently regardless of the other dishes on offer. The vegetarian profile means it works for the widest possible guest list, which is a practical advantage at any mixed-dietary event in Jersey City, Hoboken, Union City, or Bayonne.

To arrange catering, visit golcondachimney.com or come by 806 Newark Avenue, Jersey City.

From Bukhara to Newark Avenue

The argument made at the start of this piece was that the samosa is the most-travelled pastry in the world. The evidence for it is the distance between the tenth-century sanbusaj of Central Asian courts and the crisp, mint-filled, tamarind-accompanied version that arrives at a table on Newark Avenue in Jersey City today. That distance is not just geographic. It is a thousand years of cooks in a dozen cultures taking something and making it better, more suited to local taste, more deeply their own. The Hyderabadi version of the samosa is one stop on that journey, and it is one of the better ones.

Golconda Chimney is at 806 Newark Avenue, Jersey City, NJ, in India Square on Indian Square, a short walk from Journal Square PATH station. Lunch and dinner seven days a week. Full menu at golcondachimney.com.