In Bihar's Chapra district, a small sweet shop makes a kalakand so popular that people don't just come from nearby villages, they even order it all the way to Dubai. The shop sits in Basant Bazar under the Garkha block and has been serving the same recipe for close to 50 years.
One family, one recipe, five decades
The shop is called Shambhu Misthan Bhandar, named after its founder, Shambhu Prasad. Today it is run by his son, Bablu Prasad, along with his own son, making it a second-generation business. The shop is now more than 50 years old, but neither the recipe nor the quality of ingredients has changed since it first opened.
Real khoya, made over a coal fire
Bablu Prasad says pure milk is sourced from the surrounding rural areas and turned into khoya right there over a coal fire, in full view of customers, so nothing is hidden. Cardamom, raisins and cashews are then mixed into the khoya to give the kalakand its distinctive taste. According to him, the easy availability of pure milk from the villages is what keeps the sweet tasting the way it always has, and that is why the purity never slips.
Customers who have been coming back for generations
A customer, Jaiprakash Singh, says he used to visit the shop as a child with his father to eat kalakand, and he still buys sweets from the same shop today. He recalls that Shambhu Prasad himself used to make the sweets earlier, and that job has now passed on to his son Bablu Prasad and grandson. Singh says the taste has not changed at all, and people still travel long distances just to eat this shop's kalakand, which he says has kept its purity intact.
A taste that has travelled as far as Dubai
Bablu Prasad says customers come from every corner of the district to buy the sweets, but the shop's popularity is no longer limited to Chapra. People living in Dubai also buy kalakand from here to carry back with them. He said that just a day earlier, customers had bought 3 kilograms of kalakand from the shop to take to Dubai.
A small shop built entirely on trust
Bablu Prasad says his shop may be small, but there is never any compromise on cleanliness or purity. He claims even big, well-known shops struggle to match this kind of pure and tasty sweet. That, he says, is why old customers continue to trust his shop's sweets, even as new customers keep discovering it.
