kishorebhargava

New Year began with some good fooding, we barbequed on the 31st night, there was huge amounts of stuff to cook and eat and also tons of rotis and daal etc, but none of that got touched, we just ate some of what we grilled, drank, listened to music and waited for the fog to descend on us!

But early enough we decided to do check a few places that have been on our list out for a while. We started with the nice little Italian restaurant at the Italian Cultural Centre, DIVA. Unfortunately, photography was not permitted so I could not get any photos of the place or the food. But the food was good. There were four of us and two kids, Cousin Ravi, Candy and Udit, Jyoti, Kabir and me. So we decided to order a bunch of stuff. We got a fantastic grilled fish with herbs and lemon sauce, a veal, two 4 toppings pizzas, a salad and a bruschetta. The food was good but not great! The typical Italian food you get in Delhi turns out to be so rich that you normally have to skip the next few meals to allow for it to settle down. At Diva’s the food was not that heavy which is why it was good. The flavours were authentic, the service attentive, friendly but not superfast. All in all, definitely worth a visit. Apparently, membership to the cultural centre is easy to get, and only members are allowed to dine-in.

ILUG-Delhi is known for its meetings, which start on a serious note and once all the work is over, its certainly time to play. One of the favourites of all who get left at the end of the meetings is to go to Saanjha Chulha. This place literally used to be a hole in the wall, but its come a long way from there. It now sports a spanking air-conditioned restaurant with seating for a quite a large number. But the diehards like me still enjoy eating outside where all the action is. Its closer to the kitchen, you can peak in and see whats cooking, you can call out to the chiefs and get stuff cooked precisely the way you want. There are tons of people hanging outside, some sitting in their cars, others huddling around small plastic tables, but the agenda is the same, eat kababs! In the winter, very highly recommened is the fish tikka, the rest of the time the barra’s are to die for, chicken kalmi is an all time favourite, the paneer tikka masala and the mushrooms keep both the meat eaters and the vegetarians really happy and breaks away from all the meat eating. And their long standing killer app the kabab rolls must simply not be missed. If you want a full meal, they do have an assortment of breads and daal etc but stick with the “pudhina” parathas, certainly amongst the best in Delhi.

All this talk of food is making my mouth water and stomach grumble, so I’m off for my next meal. But from the sounds of it less than a week gone by and lots of food happening, I just hope I don’t put on any more weight!

Cheers…Kishore
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