It takes a Village

Writing about how great restaurants take root, the legendary chef Daniel Boulud mentions how very local this process is — how one good café can inspire two great delis, or a shining Italian trattoria can open up a district to more imaginative regional restaurants.

Delhi doesn’t have an equivalent to New York’s Meatpacking District — no similar strip of dazzling culinary excellence.

But what’s happening now in a place like Hauz Khas Village is completely fascinating. A few years ago, the Village was an over-priced tourist trap. Ritu Dalmia’s Mezzaluna, one of the city’s first contemporary Italian restaurants, had long since shut down, as had other exuberantly experimental bars and café s. The Village had three restaurants —Naivedyam, for sterling but unadventurous vegetarian Udupi-style food, Balluchi in the Deer Park, which balanced a great location with truly appalling kababs, and the bland Village Bistro.

Then Satish Warier and Kirin Bhusi set up Gunpowder (2653-5700), and pretty soon everyone was angling for a reservation at their Formica tables, a sign of how starved Delhi was for even mildly imaginative, homestyle food. Warier and Bhushi’s menu took classic Kerala dishes and added a dollop of Syrian Christian cooking, and the loyalty to Gunpowder remains fanatic — a well-known food critic found himself slammed, because he’d had the ill luck to write about his (atypically) bad dining experience. Over the last year, several new places have opened up — what makes them different from the Ais and the O Calcuttas is that these are, by and large, not cookie-cutter restaurants designed by a food consultant.

The Grey Garden (2651-6450) is currently my favourite place for an informal lunch. Run by three fashion/ art/ design enthusiasts, the menu’s still settling down, though the décor — funky — and the atmosphere — utterly relaxed — are perfect. The sesame chicken makes a much better starter than the pomegranate soup, which probably shouldn’t be served warm; they often have sides (a mango salsa, a mulberry chutney) that outdo the main course, and yet they’re having so much fun with the “slow shopping” experience that you end up forgiving them for the failed experiments.

Just a lane away, up a flight of stairs, the Flipside Café (2651-6341) has a similarly bohemian vibe; Raavi Chowdhury’s sense of fun shows in the off-kilter lamps and the bright primary colours. I’m not sold on the savoury crepes — generous fillings, but the flavours rarely balance right — but the sweet crepes, the homely little lemon and strawberry tarts and the salads and quiches are pleasant café fare. Like Grey Garden, it’s a lovely place to put your feet up and relax.

But Yeti (995858-2840) is different. Having nursed a raging momo obsession for years, I have to say the Nepalese momos are probably the best in town — the meat rich and juicy, the momo skins chewy but translucent, the broth redolent of mountain kitchens. Their more experimental dishes — a tough buffalo fry, a dubious plate of gyuma sausages — need more work, but I would forgive them everything for those momos.

Perhaps that’s the real charm of the Village; it’s one of the last places, in a Delhi driven by food courts and restaurant chains, where you can find a string of friendly amateur restaurants and cafés that won’t break your budget. Go before someone turns them all into overpriced, over-rated lounge bars.

Nilanjana Roy is a Delhi-based writer