DINING OUT: The New Angeethi is Dum Pukht Reborn Minus Pricing Pains

QUICK BITES

WHAT: Angeethi, an Awadh-Hyderabad restaurant

WHERE: The Village Restaurant Complex, Next to Siri Fort Auditorium,
Khel Gaon Marg

WHEN: Open for dinner only (from 7 p.m. onwards)

DIAL: (011) 26493945; +91-9999955889

AVG MEAL FOR TWO (WITHOUT ALCOHOL): Rs 2,000+++

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

SANDWICHED between the stranded skeletal remains of Siri Fort, the second of the seven cities of Delhi reputedly built by Alauddin Khilji on a foundation of 8,000 heads of slain Mongol soldiers, and the Asiad Village, Raj Rewal's ode to matchbox housing, bustles a restaurant complex that is famous for Chopsticks, the Chinese restaurant that's never gone out of fashion.

Angeethi, adjoining Siri Fort Auditorium, has
seen a rebirth with a new coat of paint and a new
menu with authentic Hyderabadi and Awadhi
specialities, such as Kakori Kebabs (inset).
Image: Courtesy of K. Asif, Mail Today

Since 1982, the management of the vintage Connaught Place restaurant, Kwality, which is preparing to celebrate its diamond jubilee in the coming year, has been operating this complex with yearly licences from the DDA. Chopsticks has been the evergreen star of the complex, so people haven't really cared much for Tonic, the lounge bar that comes alive whenever there's something happening at the adjacent Siri Fort Auditorium, and Colours 'N' Spice, the pan-Indian restaurant favoured by residents of the neighbourhood colonies.

Angeethi, the fourth name that'll strike your eye when you enter the complex, started out as an ambitious North Indian barbecue restaurant drawing on Kwality's formidable reputation as a purveyor of fine Indian cuisine, but it seemed to have lost the plot down the years. Not anymore, and here's why Angeethi should be next on your must-visit list.

I have always maintained that Dumpukht at the ITC Maurya is Delhi-NCR's finest restaurant in the Indian fine-dining category (the best, without doubt, is Indian Accent and its brand of 'Inventive Indian' cuisine), but like all good things in life, the place is way too (unfairly, I insist) expensive. Lesser mortals with evolved taste buds, and I am happy to report that their number has grown substantially over the years, have been praying for a restaurant that serves the cuisine of the nawabs at commoner prices.

Fortunately for us, the Angeethi menu has been turned around to answer this fervent prayer. The chef who has made this possible is none other than Ghulam Sultan Mohideen, formerly of the ITC Maurya, who must be knowing every square inch of Dum Pukht. He came out unscathed in the first test, making the perfect melt-in-the-mouth Kakori Kebabs with the best Sheermal I have had outside Dum Pukht. The combination would have set me back by Rs 1,600 (minus taxes!) at Dum Pukht, but at Angeethi, you'd pay Rs 515! And I couldn't perceive any difference of taste or experience. This is clearly not food with Kwality's seductive rusticity, but dining with the finesse you'd associate with sepia-tinted Lucknow and Hyderabad.

The Anari Lamb Chops, transformed with pomegranate juice, left a lasting impression on my taste buds, and the Jheenga Dum Nisha, another Dum Pukht classic, measured up to the high standards of the original, but at nearly a fourth of the price (Rs 650 compared with Rs 2,350). Life's pleasures don't always have to be mindlessly expensive! After getting these little beauties to tickle the palate, you'll find yourself in the mood for more.

Start with the Hyderabadi Mutton Dalcha (if you love the characteristic raw mango flavour of this preparation), otherwise stay with the more predictable Kwality Dal, which has been around much before Dal Bukhara was born. Next, you could choose between the Koh-e-Awadh (my favourite recipe with mutton shanks) and the Chicken Korma (I just loved the silky smoothness of the shahi gravy, which complemented the softness of the corn-fed chicken).

And then, departing slightly from the grand old tradition of both Awadh and Hyderabad, ask for a Murgh Yakhni Biryani, instead of Gosht Dum Biryani. I consider chicken and biryani to be irreconcilable foes, but in the hands of Chef Sultan and his team, each piece of chicken bursts with aromatic masala and flavours. Teamed with Mirch Ka Salan, it is the treat with which you'd like to leave Angeethi. But wait, you can't miss the Shahi Tukda, which doesn't come to you table as a soggy toast, but as a bouquet of textures, tastes and aromas. To my horror, I saw it missing on the menu. I hope it was a misprint.

This review first appeared in Mail Today on June 13, 2014.
Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers

mmmM: Smoking Hot Chargrilled Burgers on Smoke House Deli's Hauz Khas Village Menu

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

YOU can't really fall in love with a burger until it's smoking hot! We have many restaurants that serve good burgers, classic burgers, experimental burgers, but it's hard to find a burger with a charcoal-grilled patty infused with a smokiness that alerts your palate to the possibility of something good coming its way. It's a smokiness that can't be replicated on a regular grill, but with Weber getting popular, it is possible now for chefs to grill and smoke up a patty at the same time, which is exactly what Sid Mathur and Shamsul Wahid have done at Smoke House Deli (SHD), Hauz Khas Village.

The Benedictor is the star of the mmmBurger
Festival. You must have it, but only after
skipping breakfast!

The SHD at Hauz Khas Village is located where Suresh Kalmadi's Bistro restaurants used to be, within shouting distance from the madrasa that the enlightened Firuz Shah Tughlaq established in 1352 and the lake (hauz) that Alauddin Khilji, who ruled from 1296 to 1316, built to supply water to the residents of the city that's been known since then as Siri. It's not enough to have history as your neighbour. Mathur, a burger fanatic who's also the food and beverage head of SHD's holding company, Impresario Entertainment & Hospitality, and Wahid, the group's executive chef, know this too well to let go of any opportunity to upgrade the restaurant's menu. And their latest brainwave is the mmmBurger Festival, which has been getting rave user reviews in foodie groups such as the Delhi Gourmet Club.

The menu's smoking hot burger is the Benedictor (Rs 410), which is a brilliant, albeit calorie-intense, take on Eggs Benedict -- charcoal-grilled tenderloin patty, strips of turkey pastrami, peppered fried egg and hollandaise. You can taste the difference the all-pervasive smokiness makes to the taste profile of the burger patty. My other favourite is the naughtily named Lucy's Juicy (Rs 340), which is essentially the Jucy Lucy (the missing 'i' in the name of the original burger is deliberate) with a char-grilled lamb patty. As you'd expect from a burger inspired by the Jucy Lucy, the patty has a layer of cheese inside, but it doesn't rush out in a scalding mass.

The only exception in the menu is the Country-Style Fried Chicken Burger (Rs 360) with peri-peri glaze and cheese melt. I just loved it, though it isn't a char-grilled burger. It may have left a lasting impression because our notion of fried chicken is being increasingly influenced by KFC's growing presence. Such was its novelty that the Smoked Chicken N Tequila Burger (Rs 360) with green chillies, tomato relish and beet jelly just sank into the Black Hole of my memory.

Bravehearts highly recommend the Baconator (Rs 450), a power-packed combo of char-grilled tenderloin patty, oak-smoked bacon and bacon-flavoured mayonnaise (baconnaise), but you can either have the Benedictor or the Baconator, or one-half of each! There are more burgers on the menu, but the one that left me unmoved was the Coal Smoked Chicken Leg Burger (Rs 380) with cream cheese, saffron curry and the short, broad and dark maroon reshampatti chilli. There's also a lonely vegetarian burger, which makes the intentions of the moving spirits of the festival quite clear: this is a celebration of char-grilled meats and is only for card-carrying carnivores.

It may be worth your while to visit Hauz Khas Village and partake of these char-grilled beauties. You may find it hard to go beyond the Benedictor or the Baconator, so drop in with your friends and share your burgers to get a taste of the many flavours, textures and tastes. When you're at the mmmBurger Festival, sharing is more than caring -- it's being able to get the best out of the most.

India’s First Gourmet Jams Store Opens in Delhi’s Prospering Shahpur Jat

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

A promo poster from The Gourmet Jar's Facebook page.

APEKSHA JAIN calls herself a ‘confiturer’, who in Queen’s English is a person producing jams, marmalades and conserves, but what makes her special is that she uses only fresh seasonal fruit (not sugary fruit pulp) and organic sugar, and she doesn’t pump up her products with corn syrup, a food industry favourite that enables moisture retention. And now, she’s also the owner of the first shop in the country, The Gourmet Jar, which sells only home-made jams, marmalades and conserves.

The Shahpur Jat store, which opens tomorrow (October 6) with a jam and cheese tasting, will be significant also because it marks the revival of a previously sleepy ‘village’, which has a sprinkling of designer stores and the city’s first Bihari restaurant, Potbelly, in the shadow of the ruins of the walls of Siri, the third city of Delhi that Alauddin Khilji founded in 1303.

Local historians say the village was settled some 900 years ago by the Panwar Jats, who came from a village named Indri in Haryana. They were attracted by the fertile soil of the area. As Delhi’s chronicler, Mayank Austen Soofi, writes in www.thedelhiwalla.com, the government acquired the extensive farmlands of the villagers in 1978 to create the upscale Asiad Village, Panchsheel Park and Hauz Khas neighbourhoods of gentrified South Delhi. The compensation amounts were massive, so the old landed gentry of the village are sitting on piles of money and property.

With Hauz Khas Village ready to implode (watch out for my blog post on the subject), thanks to its humongous popularity and the boundless greed of both landlords and restaurant promoters, Shahpur Jat may just experience a dramatic change in its fortunes. With rentals still a third of those in Hauz Khas Village, it has seen a steady movement of stores, the next big launch (on October 12) being that of Anamika Singh’s Anandini Tea. Shoe Garage and installation artist Puneet Kaushik’s Alter Ego are the two well-known stores of the neighbourhood.

Apeksha Jain. Image: Courtesy of Veggie Wiz

Returning to Apeksha Jain, whom many of you may know as the blogger behind Veggie Wiz, her affair with jam-making began in France, where she spent a year and fell in love with a banana jam she tasted at an orchard in Burgundy. On her return to Delhi, the LSR alumna started making exotic jams, an art she mastered in France, first for her husband and then for her extended family, and before she knew it, The Gourmet Jar was born.

Jain’s spread includes exotica such as mango jalapeno or cape gooseberry cinnamon preserve; apple, green tea and rose jam; banana rum or fig Cointreau jam; marmalades with orange and apricot brandy or bitter orange and whisky; mulled wine jam for the Christmas season; and mint chocolate and strawberry spread. The confiturer even has a sugar-free jam with dates and prunes. The prices are between Rs 300 and Rs 350, and a gift pack of three small jars (125gm each) comes for Rs 600.

The sugar content of her products, Jain insists, is less than half of that of the commercial brands. And she only uses one spoonful of alcohol for 300gm of certain jams, which she believes require that infusion for flavour enhancement. So, relax, there’s no likelihood of your children getting inebriated after consuming Jain’s jams!

A delicious proposition, isn’t it? Being a lover of specialty jams and fruit conserves, my heart beats for The Gourmet Jar.