Venue: Epicuria Food Mall, Nehru Place
Date: 9 October, 2016

While roaming around South Delhi and Chittaranjan Park during Durga Puja, we decided to have some late lunch and since we were undecided on the place, we went to Epicuria Food Mall, Nehru Place. Epicuria is loaded with dine-in options with many standalone restaurants like Social, Taco Bells, FIO and several options in food court like KFC, Burger King, Uncle Tom’s hot dogs etc. While we were undecided on the place, we were sure about the cuisine. We were craving for some North Indian food and this made it easy for us to decide the restaurant and we zeroed in on Dhaba by Claridges.

The decor is in bright Indian colors. A truck for a bar (aptly called Theka), tables with elephants and Indian floral motifs , Achaar martbaan (Pickle jars) with labels like “Maami ka gobhi achaar”, Bollywood posters and some quotes on the walls.

Since it was past lunch hour the place was all empty and we didn’t have to wait at all. The flip side was that none of the tandoor items (like naan, kebabs etc) were available. Moreover this was a vegetarian day for us. We ordered Tawa Parantha along with Dhaba Daal and Paalak Paneer. Tawa paratha was absolutely home style simple light paratha. Dhaaba daal was the usual daal makhani. It was well cooked but with butter slightly on the higher side. We prefer dal makhani where the hero of the dish is dal, not the butter or cream. Palak paneer came with a disclaimer in the shape of red dry chilly on top of the paalak. This was delicious but extremely spicy. Since inherently palak and paneer both are bland, probably they added a lot of mirchi to spruce up the dish. But we like this dish for its blandness and would have preferred it with lesser chilly.

Nevertheless the overall combination of paratha, palak paneer and dal satisfied our desi craving that day.

No major complaints with the food but for this price, we expected much more. Hopefully next time when we go a little early we can try some of their non vegetarian items along with other recommended dishes.