The honest reason is temperature. A gulha that has been kept warm for an hour is a different food, and we would rather not sell it to you.
Our short eats come off the menu at half past one in the morning, which annoys a small number of people every single night. The reason is worth explaining because it says most of what you need to know about how this kitchen thinks.
Short eats are at their best within about fifteen minutes of leaving the oil. A bajiya at fifteen minutes is crisp on the outside and steaming inside. At an hour it has gone soft, the filling has dried and the pastry has taken on the smell of the warmer. It is still food and you would still eat it. It is not the thing you ordered.
The only way to serve them after half past one would be to fry in batches and hold them, because the fryer is doing chips and burgers for the rest of the night and forty five minutes of it cannot be given to a box of gulha at two in the morning. Holding them is exactly the thing that makes them worse.
So we stop. What stays on after half past one is everything that is cooked to order and eaten within twenty minutes of being cooked: burgers, rice, noodles, eggs and toasties. Those are as good at two as they are at nine.
If you want short eats late, order them into the midnight hour and eat them at half past. They will hold perfectly well for a short while in a paper bag, and the one thing worth doing is taking the chutney out of the box. Sealed hot pastry beside a wet sauce goes soft in about twenty minutes, which is the single most common reason somebody is disappointed by short eats that were perfect when they left here.
The same rule is why we send chutney separately on every large order without being asked.