Sancho’s

There seems to be a terrible paucity of good Mexican food joints in Delhi.

One of the options that has been around for a while is Rodeo’s. Frankly, I haven’t even tried their stuff yet, but that’s only because I keep hearing very mixed reviews about the place.

A week ago, I was in the mood for Mexican and called up Harneet for ideas. That’s when I got to know about Sancho’s in South Ex. My experience was good enough to suggest an EOiD outing, and so yesterday seven of us landed up there for some dinner.

Afghan Food at Lajpat Nagar

I heart EOiD.

It was just a few weeks ago, on December 21 to be precise, while making a plan for Kabuli food in Ballimaran, that it suddenly struck me — surely there were other Afghan restaurants in Delhi? A little googling indicated the existence of such a place in Lajpat Nagar, but there was no mention of the precise location.

So I posted the question on our EOiD community on Orkut, thinking perhaps eventually someone in the know would come along. The response left me stunned — barely had a few hours passed that Manik (yes, the same one who’d pointed me to Nagpal’s Chhole Bhature) wrote back with the name and exact address of the place, with the owner’s cell number to boot!

Nagpal Amar Rahe!

There are few things more difficult than getting yourself to start going for morning walks in Delhi’s pitiful excuse of a monsoon season. I had been trying to get going for several weeks, on occasion even succeeding in rousing myself in the wee hours of the morning. But I would lose heart when just a step out of the house confirmed that sona inside was infinitely better than sauna outside.

La Crème de Sadar

Every once in a while, someone comes up to me and conspiratorially recommends what must by now be the worst-kept secret in South Delhi’s “offbeat” food scene — Khan Chacha’s kabab corner in Khan Market. Frankly, I find said place more than a tad over-rated — the kabab rolls tend to be all shmushed up inside, and you can barely discern anything more than a floury-meaty taste.

M. I. Meat Suppliers

For reasons I myself cannot comprehend, I recently decided to take the University Grants Commission’s (UGC) NET exam, a cockeyed morally offensive mind-numbing scandal of a paper that deserves to be thrown out.

But on the plus side, it gave me the occasion to revise some of the basic concepts in economics that had been parroted out to us in our undergrad years.

One such is what is known as Engel’s Law, which states that as incomes rise, the share of expenditure on “necessities” like food declines.

INA Meena Dikha!

(or, Fishing for Mallu Food at I. N. A. Market)

Vinayan and I have come a long way. About a decade ago, when our department acquired its first few computers and pretended to call the room they were dumped in a “lab”, I was an eager little graduate student there. I would go to him for assistance, entering his room with a hesitant “Sir?”. A friendly smile would instantly wreath Vinayan’s face, and soon I was saying the “Sir” without really meaning it. Now I teach students in the same computer lab, and Vinayan always meets me with a “Good Morning, Sir!”. But I’m happy in the knowledge that he too, never means the “Sir”.

Over the years, we’ve acquired many grey hairs, been through much sadness and joy, but with one thing or another, we’d never ended up going out together for a meal. That lacuna had been bothering me lately, so last week I used the pretext of this blog to ask Vinayan if he’d take me to a good mallu place in town.

Momo’s affair

Zero is not India’s greatest contribution to mankind, it’s the Manchurian. What, with all the jeera, dhaniya, and even garam masala it seems right from the heart of the Guangdong province, doesn’t it?

The Nepali kancha cooking chowmein in that pseudo-wok (essentially a kadhai) isn’t all that bad, I’ve realized. I’ve had the ‘real’ Chinese – and no, House of Ming isn’t the absolute Chinese-Chinese — and I’ve had the Indian-Chinese. I’m a sucker for both, but it’s the Indie-Chinese that leaves you with that strong aftertaste of dark soy, chilli and garlic — reminiscent of the yum that was.

Paka, and spaceba for all the Tilapia!

The Russians are a darling lot. They are apt to be disarmingly rude yet bashfully imperial, to drink like pigs, dance like oafs, have fond memories of their mothers humming to Raj Kapoor tunes, and love cooking just the way their grandmothers did.

Or so has been my experience from staying with a Russian roommate and interacting with her swarm of friends in the US. Russian cooking is geared to help you survive through extreme cold and poverty, so you could say it was ideally suited for us graduate students in Chicago. Slabs of pork, fillets of tilapia (which I loved precisely because they didn’t smell like fish), dumplings, mashed potatoes, and generous amounts of sour cream and soya sauce figured prominently in my roommate’s cooking, and it was only thanks to trips to the gym that we kept our weight in any control.