Venue: Worldmark 1, Aerocity

“The buckwheat cake was in her mouth..”

This lyric from the golden melody Oh! Susanna by Stephen Foster we learnt in school introduced-us to buckwheat cake..as horse food. Life came a full circle when we had buckwheat pancakes at Monsoon by Café Lota, one of the latest contemporary cafes in Delhi NCR. These starters, made from a special variety of buckwheat from Uttarakhand, were melt in the mouth tasty and could be spiced up with a sauce served on the side.

In fact, they seem to use a host of common as well as uncommon Indian ingredients procured from various parts of the country and present these, with a twist, to diners. We have loved our Café Lota and Roots dining experiences and our all time favourites Triveni Terrace Café – all offbeat cafes in Delhi NCR. Monsoon, the new kid on the block among restaurants near Delhi airport, has been launched by the team of Cafe Lota and we can see the same sensibilities being applied here. Earthy but contemporary décor with striking yellow ochre Jaisalmer stone walls and old style shuttered window panes. It is an Indian yet minimalistic approach that does not distract you from food. The old-style crochet doilies and serviettes reminded us of home. In line with the interior, food at heart is Indian. Unique dishes being created from familiar regional cuisine. Just like in Triveni or Roots.

For example, take the case of Bandel cheese. The craft of making cheese in India is mostly restricted to cottage cheese orchhena. However, there are some varieties of local cheese that are available in Kolkata. We know about Kalimpong and Bandel cheese.  At Monsoon by Café Lota, we loved the Bandelcheese based salad that also contained Khapli wheat grains – apparently the oldest variety of wheat, and topped with rye leaves. The smoky flavour of Bandel cheese produced in Bandel an erstwhile Portuguese settlement near Calcutta, fused with texture of wheat grains and fresh flavour of mustard leaves was a riot of tastes. We loved it so much that kept requesting multiple servings throughout the meal. Moreover, full marks to the café for getting their research right. Sadly they were out of Kalimpong cheese and we could not try it here.

Also don’t cut corners on starters here since they are really good at it.

The Kerala fish – spicy fried sole fillet was not the regular fish fry that we get in the market. And talking about regular food, we loved the twist they gave to the ubiquitous momo. They had used a shrimp filling, boiled, mashed and sharply seasoned. The minuscule red leaf garnish on the top made this dish an Instagrammer’s delight. In fact, we loved the attention to plating of all the dishes. The dishes look beautiful but not outlandish. Thankfully, there was no injection syringes or nitrogen smoke or other forms of cryogenic cooking here.

We would also like to mention the Scotch Eggs here. Soft gooey eggs were coated with a mash of beetroot and fried as chops. The Bengali mustard sauce kasundi was served on the top. The sweet beet coating was very much like vegetable chop available in Kolkata and the Bengali between us was overjoyed.

Needless to say, we were rather full during main course. Yet, somewhat out of habit but mostly out of greed we ordered a few dishes from this section as well. For the sake of brevity, we are not going into details. But we must mention that the Jau & Meat stew (red meat cooked with barley), Sesame chicken served with Khambiri Roti from Ladakh, MalaikariSukka (prawn dish with coconut milk gravy in Bengali style and the sweet and sour Tamarind Fish (tilapia) are must tries. They are a mixture of hot to sweet to tangy. Each dish is a complete meal with protein – cereal combination and the happiness on the palette is additional.

Dessert was also not your obvious halwa or kheer. The halwa here was in orange – filter coffee flavour. The orange zest gave this dish a very refreshing taste. The kheer had salted caramel topping and this we thought was a little forced.

All said and done, we had one of the best meals in recent times here. Monsoon by Café Lota has taken out recipes from home kitchens and have played around with those. It is like getting the best of both worlds in the same dish. They also have a liquor licence and we sippedRosé on the side.

Monsoon by Café Lota is familiar – yet different. If you want to go on a dinner date, or catch up with friends or are in a don’t want to eat at home tonight frame of mind, we suggest Monsoon by Café Lota. It is a fun take on known dishes – and quite a pick me up approach to life.