Venue: Pacific Mall, Subhash Nagar
Date: 14 March, 2015

The plight of restaurants in malls is that their success is directly proportional to the number of visitors that the mall can attract. Any restaurant in a mall flourishes if there is a steady footfall of customers for shopping or hanging out.

Pacific Mall located near Subhash Nagar Metro Station is probably the biggest mall in West Delhi. Because of terrible traffic jams in the area and long waiting time to enter and park in the mall, a lot of people are staying away from this once extremely popular mall. Home to big chains like Lifestyle, Spar, PVR and many others, the mall has few takers these days. This is affecting the restaurants in the mall big time. Hinglish-The Colonial Cafe, located in Pacific Mall is also a victim of this phenomenon.

We’ve dined at Hinglish a few times before and were always impressed with their food and service. But this time around we felt the restaurant is losing its sheen along with the mall. It is located on the ground floor of the mall towards one of the exits. The decor and ambiance is not much to write home about. We liked to sit in the gazebos earlier but these days they don’t manage it very well. They have too many tables inside each gazebo and there’s a DJ right outside the Gazebo making it difficult to sit and talk peacefully.

Food wise, as the name suggests they offer a mixed bag of Western as well as Indian Cuisine. Dahi Kebabs at Hinglish is our all time favourite. So we started by ordering a Dahi Kebab along with Murgi Na Farcha. For drinks we had a Virgin Mary and a Pina Colada.

Dahi Kebabs were to die for and the chicken starter was good. From the drinks, Pina Colada was fantastic. Just the right mix of sweetness with pineapple juice and coconut. But Virgin Mary was terribly disappointing. Salt, we expected but mirchi-in a mocktail? Seriously? We couldn’t bear more than a sip of that drink and we asked them to replace it with a Pina Colada. They did it after resisting and arguing a bit.

For main course we had Dal Makhani with roti and a Chicken Stroganoff with Rice. Dal and Roti were usual, rice was passable but chicken was totally bland and somehow tasted a little stale. We could not finish this and left more than half of it.

For desserts we had chocolate mousse and vanilla ice cream with brownie. Desserts were ok.

Overall this time around Hinglish wasn’t as good as it used to be. Be it the ambiance, food or service -everything has taken a nosedive. The staff looks disinterested. It was a gem in West Delhi and we used to recommend this place to family and friends but we’ll have to think twice before going there or recommending it again.

Must try: Dahi Kebab and Pina Colada