Shingaras from ‘Love Triangle’: Unique or overpriced?

It is quite difficult to find someone who does not enjoy a shingara or two on any given day.

One of the reasons why shingara is a well-liked street food is because it is cheap, light yet filling, and a tasty snack. 

Traditionally, the stuffing inside a shingara is either a mixture of potatoes cooked with a variety of spices, with the occasional sprinkling of peanuts, or a mixture of spicy kolija (beef liver) with cubed potatoes. 

Customarily, shingaras are sold at roadside hotels and mobile street food carts and are priced between Tk5 and Tk15 a piece. 

However, some cloud kitchens and street-style restaurants have started selling this street-side delicacy which cost a whole lot more. 

The question here is: Do these high-street shingaras taste better than the street-side ones? 

To find out, we tasted some of the best-selling shingaras from 'Love Triangle' - a cloud kitchen that specialises in shingaras, 'porota' pizzas and, most recently, 'sanduices' (sandwich) - all of which come with a 'bideshi' twist.

We chose to taste seven of Love Triangle's most popular shingaras based on their taste, uniqueness, price, and tried to figure out to what extent it was true to its name. 

Let us start with Love Triangle's 'Bi-deshi' range of shingaras - these are shingara shells filled with stuffing from the West.

The Chicken Mayo Shingara

As the name suggests, The Chicken Mayo Shingara was a green chili loaded take on the chicken sandwiches we can buy at many bakeries. 

The shingara was brimming with bite-sized pieces of chicken and cubes of potato, each piece coated in a thick layer of mayonnaise-based sauce that tastes almost like an Alfredo sauce - unlike traditional shingaras that are not saucy at all.

Overall, this shingara leaned more towards the spicy side as it has a hefty amount of chopped up green chilis mixed with the potato-chicken stuffing and had a very strong savoury kick to it. 

Surprisingly, it tasted a lot better after it had cooled down to room temperature than it did when it was piping hot; the drop in the temperature allowed the spice factor to mellow down a bit - letting the savouriness of the mayo sauce shine through.

Love Triangle's Chicken Mayo Shingara was indeed true to its name and each shingara is priced at Tk50. We give it a 7/10. 

The Cheeseburger Shingara

If you were blindfolded and you bit into one of these, you would think that you took a bite out of a cheeseburger. That is how true to its name this shingara is. 

The stuffing inside Love Triangle's Cheeseburger shingara is a minced up version of a beef burger patty mixed with small chunks of tomatoes, onions, and mushrooms. 

Everything is fused together with a hearty dollop of burger sauce and a strong-tasting cheddar cheese - exactly as it is in a cheeseburger. 

Priced at Tk60, this shingara is essentially a mini cheeseburger minus the buns and we give it an 8.5/10.

The Pizza Shingara

Like its predecessor, The Pizza Shingara also tastes exactly as its namesake. 

The stuffing of this shingara is made up of pieces of pepperoni, mushrooms, and some sort of processed meat which may or may not be sausages. 

The best feature of this shingara is the stringy mozzarella cheese that holds the stuffing together. You will get the cheese pull with every bite. 

However, if you are someone who prefers less salt in their food, The Pizza Shingara may come as a threat to your taste buds as it is quite a bit on the salty side. 

Nevertheless, the pizza-ness of this shingara is top-notch and justifies its price point of Tk60. We give it a 7/10.

The Cheesy Chicken Shingara

At first look, this is going to look a lot like The Chicken Mayo Shingara but once you take a bite, the savoury taste and flavours of Love Triangle's Cheesy Chicken Shingara will take your taste buds on a grand tour. 

This shingara is ready to burst at its seams with a hearty stuffing of cubes of cheese and chicken. 

The taste is inexplicably simple but this is what makes it so good as it allows all the well-balanced flavours to really let themselves be known inside your mouth. With every bite, you will get a cube of cheese and chicken. 

So far, this was the best shingara we tasted, although I wished it was a bit larger in size. 

Nevertheless, paying Tk80 for this seems fair enough and deserves a solid 9/10.

The Shingara Dog

Remember the meat-based 'puli pitha' we eat every winter? This shingara may remind you of that but instead of the 'jhura mangsho' (pulled beef), it is stuffed with a whole sausage and thickly-cut strands of caramelised onions. 

The stuffing is held together by an overly sweet tomato sauce that offsets the balance of flavours when paired with the already sweet onions. 

Overall, the stuffing elements of The Shingara Dog failed to complement each other and felt too sweet for my brown taste buds. 

Worst of the lot, this shingara costs Tk80 and we give it a 4/10.

Now, let us check out Love Triangle's deshi shingaras.

The Kolija Shingara

Just like the traditional kolija shingaras found at street-side hotels, Love Triangle's Kolija Shingara tasted like a levelled up and refined version of that. 

The stuffing is made of small cubes of carrots, potatoes, onions, coriander leaves and, of course, bite-sized cubes of beef kolija. 

Flavour wise, it is everything one can ask for in a deshi-style kolija shingara - spicy, filling, and hearty. 

Priced at Tk50, we give it 8.5/10.

The Kalabhuna Shingara

Although the name sounds tempting enough, Love Triangle's Kalabhuna Shingara may fail to meet our high expectations as it is an expensive version of The Kolija Shingara, minus the kolija. 

The stuffing of this shingara is made with the same mix of vegetables as its predecessor and chunks of beef which did not taste like kalabhuna at all. 

The main factor that contributed to this was the overloading of vegetables, particularly potatoes that diluted quite a bit of the beef taste. 

Each piece of this shingara costs Tk80 and we give it a 4.5/10.

Bonus point

All the shingaras, irrespective of their taste, get a bonus point for the thin and crispy shingara shells which were very different from the soft and flaky regular shingaras at any street-side restaurant or street food stall.