The Taste by Vir Sanghvi: Delhi welcomes new eateries, but dining experience falls short

Delhi has welcomed many new restaurants this year, but most fail to meet expectations, lacking the quality found in Mumbai or Bangalore.

There is good news and there is bad news. The good news is that many new restaurants have opened in Delhi this year. Once upon a time all the openings were in Gurgaon which was not great for Delhi people who did not want to brave traffic jams of much more than an hour or get stuck in water-logged roads for the three months of the year when Gurgaon becomes some Haryanvi’s idea of Atlantis, the undersea kingdom.

Delhi sees new restaurant openings but quality remains a concern.(Unsplash (representative image))

The bad news is that most of the newish Delhi restaurants are not much better than those in Gurgaon where the average standard is pretty dismal. The National Capital Region (NCR), which is basically Delhi plus Gurgaon plus Noida (which is the one part of Uttar Pradesh that nobody bothers to travel to for the food), has nothing on Mumbai or Bangalore where great new restaurants keep opening.

Oh yes, Delhi is very good at the top of the market (Bukhara, Indian Accent, China Kitchen, Dum Pukht, 360, Shang Palace, etc) and the dhaba food can be wonderful. But at the middle of the market very few outstanding restaurants have opened in the last few years. If you want a reliable place to go to, the 50-year-old favourites (United Coffee House, Kwality etc) are still your best options.

I know because even though I keep trying to eat at home when I am in Delhi, on the grounds that I eat out all the time when I am travelling, I have forced myself to explore the restaurant scene over the last two months in the interests of keeping my readers well informed. (Which is not to say that every bad meal I have had to endure is your fault, dear reader, only to inform you of the sacrifices I make for the sake of this column.)

There have been some good experiences. Sahil Mehta, who is to the patisserie scene in India what Cedric Grolet is to France, has opened the Paris Coffeehouse in Greater Kailash Two market. Of course it’s wonderful because Sahil is incapable of making any patisserie that is less than excellent. But it’s a small cafe that depends entirely on Sahil’s skills and not a full fledged restaurant.

And then there is Mesa in the Lodhi Colony Market (apologies to those who live outside the NCR but all Delhi localities have strange names like these) which is a relaxed oasis of casual dining. (Dos, Tres, and Jamun are popular options.) My wife and I wandered in one day for lunch and were pleasantly surprised.

Mesa is run by a young chef called Sandeep Namboodiry, who once worked with the great Manish Mehrotra (after I posted about my meal at Mesa on Instagram, Manish messaged to say how talented Sandeep was), but sticks (mostly) to a modern European menu here.

Not everything works brilliantly— he doesn’t have the oven required to make the greatest pizzas, though his were not bad, and his Japanese omelette was not much more than acceptable— but there’s enough delicious food to make me want to go back. You can see real skill on display here and Sandeep is a chef to watch.

This counts for something because I don’t think Delhi has as many talented chefs as, say, Mumbai. And unfortunately, even when Delhi chefs have talent, the restaurants are badly run.

A few months ago I went to Cala, an unassuming neighbourhood restaurant in Panchsheel Park. The European food was far better than anyone had a right to expect. The pizzas were good, the pasta was authentic and a sophisticated prawn dish stole the show. The chef appeared to serve the dessert (also good) and when I asked about his background, said he had worked at Masque in Mumbai.

Encouraged by that experience I booked for lunch last Sunday. When we arrived the solitary server in the dining room asked if I had a reservation. I said I did and gave my name. I don’t know why he bothered to ask because he didn’t look up any list of reservations but just led us out of the restaurant to an outside area where a low hung shamiana had been erected.

I remembered the outside area because we sat there last time. This time, presumably because it was hot, it had been covered with this makeshift shamiana. It was dark (either they had no lights or they had not bothered to put them on) claustrophobic and the tables had not even been set.

I asked why this was our only option given that I had booked the day before. The server had no idea. I said we could not possibly eat here and left. He seemed unconcerned. Perhaps the restaurant is closing down and they don’t care about guests. Because nobody who wants to stay in the hospitality business can afford this kind of attitude.

Stuck for a place to have lunch, I looked up Plats, which many people have praised, on the net , found the number and called. Nobody answered.

I then called Indy at Eldeco centre. This is run by the people behind QLA, a restaurant I like. They answered the phone promptly but said they were full.

Resisting the urge to take the easy way out and find a hotel restaurant or to return to one of our two go-to places for Sunday lunch (Cafe C at Chanakya and Cha Shi, both of which are excellent) we decided to try our luck at the new bustling Eldeco Centre in Malaviya Nagar, where there are many other restaurants apart from Indy.

Nearly every place was full. There were crowds of hungry Bengalis outside 6 Ballygunge Place and the Arts Room was packing them in. But we roamed the corridors till we found a table at a Japanese restaurant called Hikki which I had never heard of. It is a relatively plush place that is well managed and because it is more expensive draws an older average diner than most of the Eldeco restaurants.

For all that, there were some basic mistakes. The tables are lit with overhead lamps that come down dangerously low which, I guess, is a stylistic touch favoured by someone with dodgy taste. But, more crucially, all of the lighting has been designed by a person who has never heard of Instagram. The low-hanging lamps throw shadows on the food so that you can’t take pictures and they also make the guests look strangely ugly.

The food is hit and miss. The prawn tempura was good with high quality frying but this was not true of the chicken karaage. The gyoza had an oily slippery feel to them. And even by the standards of junk sushi, the nigiri was a disgrace, made with rice that was so dry they could well have cooked it a week ago. The meal was redeemed by an interesting noodle dish which was made carbonara style (like the pasta) and powered with the addition of Korean gochujang paste.

To the credit of the servers, they quietly took the karaage off the bill when they saw we had wasted it. Clearly, they mean well. And to be fair, by the time we left, the restaurant was full.

Perhaps they will get their act together: they need some urgent changes in the kitchen and they need to get someone who understands lighting to redo the lamps in the dining room.

So, nothing inspiring to report. But I shall keep looking. At some stage, some thing really good will turn up.

Or so I hope!