In the ’90s, spice and halal meat were not easy to come by in my hometown in Michigan, so on ambitious days, my mother would skip the drive to Detroit and head to Devon Avenue in West Ridge. The relationship we had with the street was not simply our pilgrimage to it. We were also tied to Tahoora and the golden box of celebratory mithai sweets shipped from there.
On the 27th night of Ramadan, I’d pass out the sweets, feeling connected to something bigger than myself. There was once a time when a stretch of Devon Avenue was the only place in Chicago to go for South Asian foods and groceries, from halal and vegetarian to chai and nihari. But as the immigrant communities grew and some residents left their initial landing area, the suburbs increasingly developed their own ecosystems — and their unique takes on desi desserts.
Now, a stretch of Roosevelt Road in the western suburb of Lombard has become a food nexus of its own. Changing tastes amongst young desis, people of South Asian descent, have led to a growth of shops run by millennial and Gen Z business owners offering desserts with a South Asian influence and halal certification. But notably missing are the full counters of mithai, the colorful sweets found across the Indian subcontinent.
These sweets play an important social role for many cultural and religious groups in South Asia. Mithai, passed out at weddings, festivals and births, is a symbol of welcome and celebration. And the widest range of mithai in the Midwes.