How to choose your chaat counters

The chaat counters are the part of a wedding guests talk about afterwards. They are also the part most often chosen badly — usually by picking whichever names sound most familiar.

Spread the regions, not the dishes

Golgappa from Agra, puchka from Kolkata and pani puri from Mumbai are three counters serving what a guest will experience as one dish. Pick one of them, then go somewhere else entirely: a Banarasi palak patta chaat, a Rajasthani kadhi kachori, an Indori bhutte ki kees.

One counter should be live theatre

Something with fire, nitrogen or a torch gun. A live ghewar, a nitro-freeze dahi bhalla cone, a khakhra chaat with mozzarella melted in front of the guest. It does not have to be the best thing you serve. It has to be the thing people photograph, because that is what pulls the queue over.

One counter should be for the elders

Dal baati churma, or a bedmi poori with aloo ka saag, or simply a good kullhad chai running all evening. The grandparents at your wedding will not queue for a quinoa cone, and they should not have to.

Put them apart

Four counters in a row makes one queue. Four counters at four corners makes four short ones, and it moves guests around the venue, which is what you actually want on a long evening.