A new restaurant has opened in our area (and calls itself a dhabha) with a lot of bling on the outside. There are too many fancy lighting, larger parking space and well-dressed waiters. A recipe for success? Well, it calls itself a Dhabha, but appears as if it is at the five-star level!
I am talking about Aangan, the shiny new restaurant that opened on the Kalyan-Shil highway near Katai toll plaza. Took my wife and the toddler there today for a Sunday brunch, and came back unimpressed. I had been looking for a chance to go in and have some food, just so that I can try them out and see how good they are. All the bling translates to food or is it just another fad!
Interiors
The ambiance is designed to be lovely and looks premium. I am vegetarian, so that kind of limits my choices of food. And for all you know, this restaurant may be serving excellent non-vegetarian menu, so you will not find me writing about it here.
As soon as we took our place, I saw flies all over and had a tough time keeping them away from the food we were eating. Surprisingly, the waiters were far too less interested in doing anything about them. Though they were friendly, I did not find anything else wrong with them.
I got honestly concerned for my two-year-old, who was with us. We were too late to look for another place and decided to dive in and order the food.
The so-called Food
We scanned through the menu and everything there was quintessentially Indian. Of course, they call themselves a dhabha and hence the list. It is a trend these days. Tell a youth about having food at a dhabha, and they sure are excited. This excitement though is shortlived – this is nothing like dhabha. It is a decent restaurant set up, which appears to be likable.
We had ordered Manchaow soup, Dal Khichdi (for the toddler and by hence for us too), a buttermilk and a sweet salt lime soda.
How did they get basics wrong?
Though Machaow soup could have been better, Dal Khichdi, on the other hand, tasted just like Steam rice and usual Dal that I mixed on my table. I question my own choices of food I ordered at that stage. Buttermilk too, a basic drink, tasted weird. Sweet+Salt lime soda that I ordered was not stirred enough and ended up wasting about a quarter of it after it tuned utterly saline.
The quality of the food was strictly okay but not as good, not very good, not excellent, not fantastic, not impressive! I mean, you can eat it and earn yourself a Ph.D. in expressions. Throughout the brunch, due to so many things going around, I did not feel like taking any pictures.
Verdict
The overall set up is nice though, and it does appear to be premium. However, I missed the food, and that pissed me/us off today. As I said earlier, it may well have to do with the "Vegetarian" dishes we ordered.
I made it up though by taking my wife and daughter to our favorite restaurant for dinner.
India
I find most of these pseudo dhabas serving very mediocre food. But that’s true for so many eating outlets these days. Difficult to find good, tasty food these days…
Hey Untourists, thanks for the visit and your comment. Yep, I agree that these pseudo dhabas are not that great!
Good food is hard to find in this urban mess these days. But we always have our favorite restaurants:-)
Hey Amit, thanks for the visit and your comment. Good restaurants are indeed hard to find.