Wow! Momo doesn’t quite fit in with the other American-inspired fast food joints I’ve written about so far — but it turns out that finding local fast food chains in India isn’t all that easy. All of the ones that seemed promising turned out to be from other countries — mostly the UAE.
Wow! Momo is close enough. Though they mostly specialize in momos (which are Tibetan-style dumplings), the menu has at least a couple of burgers.
I ordered the Wow! Super Meal, which comes with four steamed momos, a Tibetan noodle soup called thukpa, a “Moburg,” and a Pepsi.
The momos were pretty grim. They looked sad, and they tasted even sadder. Featuring a chicken filling, they were doughy and mushy, with a mostly bland but also vaguely unpleasant flavour.
Two dips come on the side — a red one, which is sweet and slightly spicy, and a green one, which is bitter and bland. The momos needed a whole lot of the red sauce to be even vaguely edible.
How bad were they? I’ve eaten a lot of street food from sketchy carts while in India, and this was the first time I worried about food poisoning. And — maybe coincidentally, maybe not — the next day I woke up feeling queasy, which was the only time that happened to me in India.
The thukpa wasn’t much better. It was incredibly bland, with iffy pieces of chicken and ultra-soggy noodles.
The burger, oddly enough, was the highlight (though it consisted of two momos on a bun, so calling it a burger might be a stretch). The momos were fried, which gave them some much-needed texture, and the zippy yogurt sauce was actually quite tasty.
How to find it: It’s in the food court of the Lulu Mall.