In celebration of offbeat Delhi food
Late last week, nine of us EOiD adventurers turned our noses westwards, and headed to Rajouri Garden.
I’d been looking for an excuse to go there for a while now — I kept hearing about the Giani’s ice-cream parlour there, but couldn’t enthuse myself to travel such long distances just for desserts. Then a few days ago the perfect excuse landed in my lap, when Shashank returned raving from an evening of eating out at the J-Block Community Centre at Rajouri Garden.
There are few things more difficult than getting yourself to start going for morning walks in Delhi’s pitiful excuse of a monsoon season. I had been trying to get going for several weeks, on occasion even succeeding in rousing myself in the wee hours of the morning. But I would lose heart when just a step out of the house confirmed that sona inside was infinitely better than sauna outside.
Once upon a time there ruled over twentieth-century Indraprastha, not one but two Ashoks, whose empire stretched as far as the eye could see, and their fame even beyond.
Okay, granted that the eye couldn’t see very far at all in twentieth-century Indraprastha, but you get the gist.
Every day when the sun would set on their bonny kingdom, the Ashoks would collect their tithe, and transform it into a toothsome treat of mutton and chicken, curried in the richest of gravies, replete with desi ghee and the finest dry fruits their minions could muster.
Japanese food in “saadi dilli” is a bit of a rarity. In a largely vegetarian world, the demand for such food is low to begin with. Add to that the “eek” factor associated with raw fish, and then being affordable largely by the urban bourbon-drinking page 3 hip and plastic crowd, and you have a cuisine on which the exclusion factor has been really high. I chanced on it, or rather was force-fed on it, when my parents decided to move to Japan for a year almost 15 years ago. Since then there has been no looking back and I’m always on the lookout for places serving Japanese food. So I was super excited to learn from a cousin that a japani eating place had opened up in D-Block Market, Poorvi Marg, Vasant Vihar, called Tamura (ph: +91-11-26154082).
[update: Ten has been closed since September 2007. This article may now be considered an epitaph.]
I used to think I knew every little nook and corner of central Delhi better than the back of my hand. So you can imagine how piqued my curiosity was, when Harneet first told me that right under my nose — presuming my nose hovers like a benevolent alien saucer somewhere over Lutyen’s creation — was possibly the best restaurant Delhi has to offer.
However, it is a sad testament to my scepticism that it took another glowing recommendation from Abhik before I finally went to try out Ten, the restaurant on the campus of the YWCA International Guest House, at 10, Parliament Street.
Continue reading “Ten out of Ten!”
As the summer flexes its muscles over the subcontinent, the mind harkens back to a “field trip” to the Fatehpuri Masjid area of old Delhi in early February. On a cold winter Sunday, four of us intrepid foodies found ourselves at the Chandni Chowk metro station, with an appetite braced by the early morning drizzle.
I was sure we were in for a treat the moment Shashank led us into an obscure little back lane leading away from the station, with the confidence of a sherpa on the road to the Everest. Here was a man who knew his puraani dilli.
Continue reading “On a (Church) Mission to Fatehpuri Masjid”
On a sunny winter afternoon, led by our enthusiastic local guide Asmita, Harneet and I set out to try the many little gems tucked away in the by-lanes of Kamla Nagar, near the North Campus of the University of Delhi.
Our pilgrimage began, as it inevitably had to, with Chacha’s Chhole Bhature. Thanks to the holiday and an early start, we pulled off the unthinkable — a meal of surprisingly non-greasy Alu Bhature, with the lip-smackingly delicious chholey coupled with perfectly fried potatoes, fresh onions and green chillies, all without having to stand in a long line of drooling undergrads!
Continue reading “North Campus Delights”