Paranthe wali gali, Chandni Chowk

Deep fried paranthas

As our first outing as RoamingFood group, we decided to start with authentic Indian street food. We went onto Chandni Chowk on 22nd Aug, 2011.

The first parantha shop in the gali is Pandit Devi Dayal’s (established in 1886). Then the next one is Kanhaiya Lal Durga Prasad’s Parantha Shop (established in 1875). The last one was Pt. Gaya Prasad Shiv Charan (established in 1872). As we found last one as the oldest shop, we decided to move into this one. Some 50-60 years back there were around 15-20 shops in this street, but now only 4-5 have left. All of these shops had photographs on the wall that showed Nehru, Indira Gandhi or Ranbir Kapoor dining in the shop.

Gaya Prasad Shiv Charan Paranatha shop

Gaya Prasad Shiv Charan Paranatha shop

50 years back the paranthas were just of 3-4 types aloo, gobi and matar (potato, cauliflower and peas). But now-a-days, you can try 24-25 varieties of paranthas. Apart from normal aloo, daal, methi, gobhi etc, there were special paranthas like papad, parat, gajar, kaju, rabri paranthas.

Types of Paranathas available

Types of paranathas available

Out of the above list, I can remember of eaten Papad, Roll, Mirchi, Mewa, Badam, Rabri, Khurchan, Kela, Karela and tamatar 🙂 My favorites among these are Rabri, Papad, Mirchi and Tamatar.

All of these are fried in pure ghee in cast iron pans (kadhai). This reminded me “The most enjoyable things in this world are either immoral, illegal or fattening !”

Deep fried paranthas

Deep fried paranthas

All paranthas are served with Mint-Pudina Chatni, Imli-Kela Chatni, vegetable pickle, Seetaphal and Aloo Subzi.

Paranathas serving

Paranathas serving

Another good part is malai wali Lassi, which you can order apart from paranthas, it will help you digest the stuff.

Katra Shah N Shah, Chandni Chowk, New Delhi, Delhi, India

Cafe Deja Brew, Sohna Road, Gurgaon

cafe-deja-brew-coffee

After ignoring signage placed on Sohna road divider for many days, One fine evening while returning from office we finally decided to visit Cafe Deja Brew.

This small cafe is located in Atrium, Iris Tech Park on the Sohna road. The office compound is newly built and is hardly occupied due to not-so-good economic industry conditions. There are only few cars parked in building and one can easily find a good parking inside.

Cafe Deja Brew is a small coffee outlet like what CCD and Barista have opened in big office compounds. It has similar menu like normal coffee, shakes and sandwiches, pastries to eat. Rates are also pretty similar to CCDs.

We had cappuccino coffee and a cold coffee to drink. We ordered one grilled sandwich to eat. It was good but not very fresh.

This peaceful cafe can be good place on Sohna Road for some formal meetings and interviews.

cafe-deja-brew-coffee

Coffee @ Cafe Deja Brew

Address:

Cafe Deja Brew Iris Tech Park, Sohna Road, Gurgaon

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Love and Mustard, Galleria Market, Gurgaon

Courtesy our much awaited routine of ‘Let’s try something different this weekend’ we today take you to a Bengali restaurant.

Background: If Delhi & NCR has scarcity of an Indian cuisine, its Bengali. All bongs of Delhi must be cooking awesome food in their small kitchens, hence few felt the necessity for Bengali restaurants. (Not to be taken seriously or communally!) So hunting for authentic Bengali (not too sure if Bangla is better here) restaurant, our last tryst was with Oh Calcutta, a restaurant in Delhi’s Nehru Place area, which was not a great experience (issues with too much of mustard). But since food is a speedy bygone, we are ready with a fresher and much more delectable experience @ Love and Mustard.

The Action:

Love and Mustard is in the famous Galleria market in DLF Phase 4, Gurgaon. This hangout point might be tough to locate if you are new to Gurgaon. Seek directions for Post office in Galleria Market, restaurant is on first floor, on top of the Post office. Enter Love and Mustard and first thing you’ll notice is that it is a small restaurant made in a ‘shop’. Without delay you’ll have your second realisation: these guys saved on beautification and size and invested it in quality of food and offering value. Why else would we wait for 20 minutes even after an advance booking on a lazy Saturday afternoon?

So we got a table after 20 minutes of arriving at Love and Mustard and like veterans, we grabbed the menu and started reading from starters section! The vegetarian among us ordered Vegetable Chop and rest of us fancied Fish Fry with regular lime soda (lemon helps in digestion and you can eat more!)

Fish Fry

Fish fry was fish marinated in Bengali spices and it was ok. With chips and mustard sauce it was fine to eat.

Vegetable chop was not that good. It seems like a deep fried roll stuffed with too much beetroot and had sweet taste.

It was time to order for some main course items. We ordered Chingri Malai Curry,  Aloo Bhaja, Chicken Biryani, Koraisutir (Peas) Kochuri and  Luchi (Bengali Puris).

Chingri Malai Curry was good. Its an authentic Bengali dish and is prawn curry cooked in coconut milk. With peas kouchuri it tasted great. If you are visiting this place, this is a must try.

Chingri Malai - prawn curry with coconut milk gravy

Chicken biryani was not like the usual biryani, we are used to (read Deez and Viva Hyderbad one). It has potato and egg in it, apart from chicken. It  was not spicy and was pretty blend.

Chicken Biryani

For vegetarians, we had ordered Alu Bhaja, which was nothing but dry Bengali fried potatoes (as you can see below in photo). Sad….
So we had to order another veg item with gravy and it was Alur Dom (spicy potato curry famous all over Bengal).

Alu Bhaja

We really liked Koraisutir(Peas) Kochuri. It was deep fried puris filled with some special green Peas (called as “Pur” by Bengalis)

Koraisutir-Peas Kochuri

Normal luchi or Bengali puri was like our age old normal puris and nothing more than that.

Luchi -Bengali Puris

 

Now was the time of our favorite part of dining out, the Desserts 🙂

They had some interesting items mentioned in menu like Zarda (sweet rice dish), Patisapta (Indian pancakes filled with coconut laces cooked in golden date jaggery or khoya & caramelised sugar) and Crepes (thin folded pancake served hot with a sweet sauce). When we tried to order these things, they told they are already sold out and no more left. Hummm. May be we reached a bit late 🙁

We had to compromise with Payesh (rice pudding with date jaggery) and normal Rosogolla. Both these were ok types and not upto the mark. Disappointed with desserts.

Payesh - Bengali Kheer

Total bill came out as Rs 1176 for all these, which was fine and around 400 per head.

Ratings:

6/10
Good for one time visit.

Tips: You may go there with advance booking on some of the online websites like BookMyTable, they can provide some 10-15% discount. They also accept sodexo meal and gift passes, so if you have them don’t forget to carry along.

Address:

Love and Mustard, Shop No. 123, First Floor(Above Galleria Post Office), Galleria Shopping Complex, DLF Phase – 4 Gurgaon, Haryana,  India, 122009

Contact no: 8802027711, 0124-4288246
Website: http://www.loveandmustard.comMenu

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