Mezze and Moore's Batata Harra is impeccable

Batata Harra may have Lebanese origins but it reminded me of my childhood days in Delhi where you'd get potatoes on a stick. This is just those potatoes but with a mediterranean flair. Comes with a side of Pita.




Location: Mezze and Moore, SF

Disney World has great vegan ice cream

Great Vegan Ice Cream, and the cookies were vegan too. I thoroughly enjoyed the dessert!

Throwback: Me making Pasta

One of the things I had more time to make is Pasta. It's one of the trickier dishes to make, but it's just as fun as baking Pizza.

Finally had good Paneer Tikka SF

Friend visited me in SF the other day, and I finally had the chance to try the Paneer Tikka at this Indian Restaurant in Mission that goes by the name of Apna Chulha. The place is good their food is very authentic but for me what stole the show was their Paneer Tikka, it was really well done. Don't get me wrong, it's still not perfect, for e.g. the Paneer felt a little underroasted for a Paneer Tikka, but it tasted really good, so I am not complaining.

Missed Post: Next Level Burger in SF is pretty Next Level

Next Level Burger in SF is a great little place for burgers. They're all vegan, and have a good selection of options, not just Beyond Meat options. Love their Bean Burger. I feel like there aren't enough vegan burger places in US, which is a shame, since this is a fun occasional treat. Something I miss from India.

The correct way of storing strawberries

Discovered this recently. But the best way to store strawberries so that they don't go bad is to keep them dry, in a container that's lined with a paper towel, in the crisper drawer of the refrigerator (aka Chiller drawer?). Been eating these strawberries for 7 days. They haven't gone bad yet. Luckily!

Alternatively you can also share some with your neighbours. ;)

You're missing out if you don't try Shojin Ryori food

Love Cha-Ya in SF. Love the concept behind Shojin Ryori, the Japanese traditional Vegan food. Moreover it's the balance of flavors that blows me away everytime. Nothing is too spicy, too salty, too sweet or tooo sour. It's all perfectly balanced food that's light on the stomach and satisfying to eat. I'd eat it any day.

Coffee and Croissants

Vegan Coffee and Half a Croissant on a table in evening sun light.

A very stylish Vada Pav

Is that a five-star restaurant serving a Vada Pav? No it's just the local IKEA's food court having a very good lighting and wooden interior. I think this was one of the cheaper, and value for money Indian snacks I have had in the Bay Area.

Pain au Chocolat

A couple of years ago, I was in Europe, and had the opportunity to have one of the most delightful breakfasts I've ever had. A Pain Au Chocolat at this vegan cafe in Zürich (Roots), and it's the best Pain Au Chocolat I've ever had.

Two years on, I've been to Europe once more, and I've spent some time in US. I have not been able to find better vegan Pain Au Chocolat (Pronunciation Tip: | pan oh shoh-ko-lah |) anywhere.

Just thinking about this today, as reminiscing the delightful breakfast, as I was craving for one and struggling to find anything that comes close to it.

Pizza Day!

Ever since moving to Berkeley, there have been fewer and fewer occasions where I made Pizza for only the two of us: Me and my Brother. So I took the 4th of July holiday as an opportunity to do that, so both of us could have some us time.

Pizzas didn't turn out to be that great though, I have a love-hate relationship with my Ooni Volt (their Electric Oven) it's convenient but the temperature control is so finnicky. It's either not hot enough or too hot. Destroyed one Pizza because the oven was too hot and it stuck to the peel while turning it midway.

But I did make two good ones, the Margherita (not photographed here) and the P3 Pizza i.e. Peppers, Pistachio and Peaches.

Love this shot of me sprinkling extra pistachio on to the Pizza.


More Pizza Shots! :)


I got this Oliera from my previous trip to Naples. It's a traditional handcrafted Copper and Brass oil cruet. I enjoy using it a lot, but more on that later.

Robotic Food Delivery: My Experience with Kiwi Bot

Kiwi is a Berkeley based “food delivery” startup that offers delivery op- tions from the popular nearby restaurants, and then delivers them to user through an automated vehicle, which can be unlocked by the user to collect the food items. In just about a year, Kiwi seems to have made a decent amount of tie-ups with the local restaurants, and seems to gathering steam in the Berkeley area quickly.

There’s no doubt though, that the real crowd puller for kiwi is the Bot that’s currently trotting the sidewalks of Berkeley. A bright blue flag hangs on the petit bot to make the vehicle noticeable to the people walking on the street. The bot moves cautiously, looking twice before crossing a street. It’s a pleasant looking design which seems as though it was internally designed, as opposed to getting an off-the shelf vehicle.

For some reason, Bay Area’s budding entrepreneurs in the food sector seem to be obsessed with removing human interaction between the restaurant and its customer. Last year it was food being put in lockers for customers to collect, by Eatsa , this year it’s Kiwibot which aims to replace delivery boys with delivery bots. Dominos has had something similar in the US for a few months now, but this is the first time that I witnessed it, and it definite- ly caught my attention. So I decided to give the app and the experience a try.

The onboarding process for Kiwi; Do we really need these screens at this point in the user flow? I think some of the permis- sions could be asked for at a later time.

Straight up, the onboarding experience isn’t very appealing. It’s just a bunch of screenshots that inform the users about the permissions they must give in order to use the app effectively. Personally I found that the app didn’t really need those permissions on first launch, you can ask me to give a permission for notifications when I place the order, my location information can be asked for when I’m looking for restaurants. The images on display weren’t optimised for iPhone X either, I could see text being cut off by the margins, but that seems like a problem which can be fixed with a minor update. The bigger problem is the fact that, the first launch screen exists in the first place, I’d personally do away with it, or talk about the product on that screen instead of prematurely asking permissions.

The layout for selecting the restaurant is pretty simple. There’s just a list of avail- able restaurants and pressing one of them leads you to another simple list of menu items, you can customise them if that’s possible for the particular item (for example you’ll need to customise a burrito from Chipotle). The flow works fine if you’re not customising your order. If you are customising the order it gets con- fusing very quickly, moving back from the customisation screen actually cancels your order, and you need to start again, however if on the customisation screen, you tap the add button, it actually takes you back to the order screen but this time with the order quantity selection element on the screen, after which you can confirm and setup the payment and address information. It’s also surprising that the app doesn’t use a lot of system elements. For example there’s no auto fill for credit card information, so you need to input the card details manually.

Once the order is placed the app should show you a map with the position of the bot (which didn’t work for me during this particular order but I suppose it was a one off bug); The screen also features an unlock button which gets activated once the bot reaches the location.

While the ordering experience wasn’t great, I managed to place the order without much of a hitch. The receiving part was also pretty much seamless. I just had to press the unlock button in the app and the bot opened to show the food item neatly placed in the buggy that also serves as a hot-box. It seems as though Kiwi has spent quite a bit of time perfecting the delivery vehicle.

And the app’s improving quickly. In the month since I’ve used Kiwi there seem to be minor improvements already. It’s good to know that the creators are tak- ing feedback seriously.

But is it really better than having your food delivered by a human being? I don’t think so. Once the novelty of a cute robot delivering your food dies off, the only scenario where this may be feasible is is when its hard to find people to de- liver food items, or there’s an economic benefit for the restaurant to have your food delivered by a bot. While it was fun to see my order delivered by a robot, I wonder if it’s something that popularises any time soon.

The user flow for ordering a customised meal with Kiwi. While it’s better to have a bare-bones approach to the process than to offer fancy animations for no reason, sometimes even the simplest of interactions can become confusing.

In this case it was the app going ‘back’ to the previous screen after pressing “add” that lead me to believe that if I were to do the same, it’ll still retain my order information. It didn’t and I had to start over.

Restaurant from the future: Eatsa

Vidit Bhargava
The world’s first automat, a restaurant where food and drink were served by vending machines was first introduced in Berlin in 1985. The concept of getting food from a vending machine enjoyed a good 80 years or so, until it was eclipsed by fast food chains, like Subway, which had a greater flexibility of food selection and payment options.

However, as if in a revenge plot of sorts, an automat has surfaced in the United States, which aims to disrupt the Fast-food market by combining the flexibility of a counter-preparation model and modern day automation technologies to deliver food faster and cheaper. The experience is as though you were being served food by robots.

As you walk into an Eatsa, you’ll find yourself in a room with an array of iPads lined up to take your order And a grid of cubby-holes which‘ll host the food you order. It’s a futuristic experience, in the sense that there’s minimal human interaction involved. You’re expected to interact with the iPad, place your order and get your meal, all in a couple of minutes. You’re aren’t even supposed to know that there are humans preparing the food behind the cubby holes. Much like how Elves prepared the great feast in the kitchen below the large dining tables of the great hall in the Harry Potter series, and you wouldn’t know they were the ones toiling away in the dungeons unless you were Hermione. It’s the quickness of the service and the ease of placing an order that really transforms Eatsa’s experience and Eatsa’s proprietary automation tech is to be credited for it.

The Experience of Ordering food

Food ordering was a relatively simple process. You just need to sign up for Eatsa, pickup your nearest restaurant and begin preparing your meal, either either by selecting a preset food or by “Starting from scratch” and selecting your own ingredients.

I really liked the customisation options here. You can select whatever base you want, and while quinoa is pretty much the central attraction, you can even pick stuff like “Channa Masala” or “Pinto Beans” and then of course there’s an assortment of sauces and crunchies to pick from.

Eatsa’s offerings are vegetarian (with the exception of eggs, which appear to have a vegetarian status in US) and in general focus on a healthy diet and given that Eatsa’s target audience is primarily office-goers or students in need of a quick lunch, these options seem specially lucrative. Moreover, Eatsa’s app is intelligent enough to inform about potential allergens and offers filters to remove items which may contain them. This is especially handy for some one like me, who’d otherwise have to check with the staff and rely on their word for such information.

I also liked the attention to detail and the polished user interface of the app. The interactions were fluid, information clearly presented and the experience reliable, whether you’re using a kiosk or an app on your iPhone. It feels like a premium experience, at a cost that’s even cheaper than your local McDonald’s or Subway.

Once the order is placed from the app, and the food ready, your name appears to on one of the cubby-holes, which you can then double tap to unlock and get your food. While the food is still being made by humans, there’s a good deal of automation going in the background to get the food ready in a very short span of time. Usually the waiting time for something like this would be 5-6 minutes. But Eatsa’s service is a lot quicker than that. If you were placing your order at home / office and going to a store for pickup, you wouldn’t really have to wait for it to get ready. You can just walk-over to your cubby hole, pickup your food and get working.

That’s why I feel the experience is futuristic, it eliminates a lot of traditional concepts that’ll be in such a restaurant, and ultimately offers food at a very affordable cost. The experience is friction less, extremely convenient and even somewhat /delightful if you are watching this happen for the first time, these factors should really help Eatsa get a foothold in the Fast-food space quickly.

Food Quality

The food being served is no gourmet fine-dining replacement. It’s just a quick and healthy bowl filled with items you’d like to have. It’s more in the range of a chipotle or subway than your local fine-dining eatery, and for that it’s pretty tasty. It certainly feels like a very wholesome meal.

I especially liked the texture of the roasted potatoes and tofu. They were all well cooked and blended well with the rest of the ingredients.

If I were to eliminate the fact that I was visiting a restaurant that felt straight out of a Jetsons episode, I’d still want to visit the place again, since it provided a pretty delicious lunch.

But here’s the thing, Eatsa doesn’t have a lot of outlets right now. There are a couple of them in San Francisco, one near UC Berkeley, and a couple of them in New York and Washington DC. Eatsa’s only two years old right now, but it’ll need to be in a lot more places very soon to be able truly unleash the second coming of Automats.

Cafe Turtle

Vidit Bhargava
Hidden above a bookshop, Cafe Turtle is a tiny cafe with a seating capacity of not more than 25 people. The cafe, it would appear, is always bursting at its seems. It helps that their food is just too good to be missed if you are looking for vegetarian options in Khan Market.

The cafe, it seems has a single agenda. To provide as many lacto-vegetarian options as possible. They aren't particularly tied to one cuisine, you'll find a greak salad sandwich and an Aloo Samosa in the same menu. One would think, this type of variation would generally end in being just a mish-mash of Indianised versions of the purported options. However, that doesn't seem to be the case with Cafe Turtle, as they try to be just as close to the original food item as they can get.

In this visit, I had a greek salad sandwich, some bruschetta and an Iced Mochaccino at the cafe. The food is good. While the olives dominate the taste slightly, the overall preparation is very carefully done. The Greek Salad Sandwich never seemed to be oozing out of it's shell (something that could have made it incredibly messy), and the bruschetta had a a good balance of garlic and tomato flavour.

Personally, I'd recommend the Greek Salad Sandwich more than anything else. It's filling and it comes in a nice, soft bread which is something new I got to try. In terms of the taste, there's nothing at particular that grabs your attention, it's a very balanced sandwich with none of the sticking out. However, if you are not a fan of hummus you might want to look at other options too.

As much as I liked Cafe Turtle's food, I felt that the Cafe could have been bigger and quieter. A lot of cafe's in order to give themselves a cozy European feel to them, go for high-ceiling and smaller room. As a result, the place feels more chattery than it is. The moment I walked into the cafe, the place felt full of people, even though only a few tables were occupied, the voices felt very loud and hardly something you'd enjoy, if you just wanted to have your meal in peace. But that's just me, a lot of people prefer the noise (or are the noise makers themselves).

While the noise and some of the architectural choices reminded me of Soda Bottleopenerwala, the Vegetarian Only options and a balanced authentic taste give Cafe Turtle a unique identity of it's own. This one's only recommended if you are going with a small group. 

Travelling as a Lacto Vegetarian

Vidit Bhargava
Being a lacto vegetarian in San Francisco or any other city around the world can be a little tough. Given that most of these places have started to consider eggs as vegetarian, you're likely to get Vegetarian options but equally unlikely to get any 'lacto-vegetarian' meals for yourself. You could either go to a restaurant or cafe and tell them to avoid eggs in the preparation or just ask for something vegan (at which point you are just handed over a Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette), it's a pretty tough experience either way.

Pizza

Dominos has a variety of vegetarian options in its menu and they are fine, except Domino's in US offers really thick crusts and has this concept of diced tomatoes (which have a horrible taste, btw), something that I'm not looking forward to have anytime soon.

Piccolo Forno a small Italian Dine-In near North Beach , offers a couple of vegetarian options, which are very good. Being pretty new on a street that's filled with Italian Restaurants and cafes, Piccolo Forno is a quite place, the weekend I went there, the only noise was of a couple of fans watching a Euro Cup match between Portugal and Switzerland. I liked that very much, I've never been fond of ultra-noisy cafes that make it difficult to have a meal in peace.

They offer a Vegetariana Pizza where they add fresh vegetable toppings to a wood-fired Pizza (which, from the description in their menu, may change by the day). The Pizza I had, was topped with Broccoli, Aubergines and roasted Eggplant along with some of the regular toppings. Never has this combination tasted as good as it did on that Pizza. One of the unlikeliest Pizza toppings I encountered, but also one of the tastiest Pizza's I've had in a long time. This is something you don't want to miss, if you ever visit Piccolo Forno, you should have one of these.

Sandwiches

With Sandwiches, luckily Starbucks decided to offer something vegetarian in their menu that didn't have a dash of Mayonnaise. So you'll almost always be able to grab a Roasted Tomato and Mozzarella Panini from a Starbucks near you. Almost. The thing is, this particular Panini isn't stocked very well, so you'll be out of luck if you landed at a Starbucks late for lunch, you'll then probably need to search for 'vegan' options like a glorious fruit basket of preserved fruits.

If you are looking for San Francisco's signature Sourdough bread, you should head over to a Boudin Bakery Cafe which offers a few vegetarian options, including a Tomato Soup served in a hollowed out Sourdough Bread or you could ask them for a california veggie without mayonnaise. But Boudin doesn't publish any allergen info, so you'll have to rely on their word when they say their Breads aren't glazed with Egg White.

Mexican

San Francisco has a lot of options in terms of Mexican food (Did you know San Francisco was a part of Mexico until 1846?). And while I didn't explore much of Mexican Food available, I did go to a Chipotle, which seems to be similar to Subway in terms of how they make their food. Chipotle has an organic Tofu (Sofritas) filling to offer, so you can easily order a vegetarian Burrito, Bowl or Taco, which makes for a decent lunch meal. And if you are a fan of spicy food (which I'm not) there are ways to make your chipotle meal very spicy.


To be honest, Lacto-Vegetarian food is a very small subset of a subset of any menu at an international city but there's enough to make you not give it up. For me, being allergic to eggs, makes it a compulsion to look for lacto-vegetarian options anywhere I go. For a lot of people it is also for religious reasons, and some of them seem to give it up on the pretext that there aren't enough options. I hope this post helps people get a decent vegetarian meal when they visit SF next time.

Seen here is Boudin's California Veggie

Food At Hauz Khas Social

Vidit Bhargava
Earlier this month I went to the Social Cafe At Hauz Khas Village. Yes, I was in part compelled to visit the place because of the extended feature it got in Imtiaz Ali's Tamasha. But also, because I had gone (for the first time) To the Hauz Khas Village and didn't want to go a place where I had already been to, in other parts of the city. A little about the Hauz Khas Village first. Don't go to that place unless you want to witness a barrage of crowd and stacked up shops in all sorts of dimensions, constructed in what is basically an ordinary market which would have felt slightly better had the lake near it not been so polluted or its nearby monument had not been over crowded with crazy teenagers taking potentially life threatening “selfies”. So, that's the summary for HKV, it's an over-rated market with branches of most of the hyped up restaurants, cafes and shops of the city being accessible in a small radius of 1-2km.

 
Back to Social then. Social falls under the category of “Themed Cafes”. Social goes a step further though, it themes each cafe differently. The one in Hauz Khas Village branch has a 'rural' theme. So, you'll see a lot of incandescent bulbs around the place, concrete textured walls, taps that you'd generally see in a rural setting. Social is excessively themed. Themed to a fault! Actually. For examples, the tables are sort of intentionally under-polished. And this is a problem. While I was there, a splinter from the under polished table caught my sweater and ruined the wool winding slightly. Thankfully, it wasn't a severe damage to my sweater but beware when you are there.
Also, something that I noted was that Social is a heavily successful place. So, on a Saturday afternoon the place was so crowded that it affected the service. One of the managers told us that we couldn't just walk in and sit on any empty table we felt like and that we'd have to wait outside until the place gets emptier. That's the rudest thing I've heard at a cafe. It's understandable to a degree but it was also heavily discomforting. But we did get a slightly better spot in place of that, so not many harsh feelings there.



Like I said before, social is themed to a fault and the faults are exemplified when you begin with the process of ordering the food. The menu, is horribly designed. It's designed as a newspaper But unlike one, it's mostly a single column layout. It's practically impossible to read it effectively. The composition is such, that it makes it hard to figure out some of the essentials, like whether the dish is vegetarian or not or whether the beverage is alcoholic or not or simply, what is the composition of the dish. You just get a fancy name and a vague explanation Of the composition. It's hard to order properly from this menu.

After I did get past the utterly confusing menu, I did have something to eat, which were basically Jalapeño and Cheese Nuggets with a fancier name along with a platter of something that contained a bunch of dips, pita bread and a cheese patty shaped as a samosa. Again, I was unsure of what I was having because of the terrible menu composition And whatever I had didn't seem to adhere to any proper cuisine, and felt more like a chef's experiment. The taste of it was fine, but it wasn't great but it wasn't uneatable either. Poor design decisions prevailed over here as well. Having the jalapeño nuggets was a nightmare. They came stacked in a small bucket, and there was hardly any place to in there to take out the nugget comfortably. The platter was a slightly better experience though. Served in a conventional plate It was much simpler to eat. The beverages were a completely different story though. They tasted great and although they too were served in a crazy unnecessarily different way, they weren't bad. I had a great Iced Tea, which got served to me in what looked like a miniature bath tub.



Overall, while I was walking out of the place, I did have the feeling of experiencing something different And somewhat cool but also that, that this isn't the place for me. Hauz Khas Social isn't actually a bad cafe. It's that kind of a place where teens would take their friends to impress them with Cool gimmicks, I'm not sure if those guys Care about the quality of food (You can probably guess, I was never a part of that group) or just the kind of place where Imtiaz Ali would provide a setting to a great AR Rahman song (Listen: Tum Saath Ho). Social is just not the place where you would spend a quite afternoon, enjoying your food in solace.

My Experience at Au Bon Pain

Vidit Bhargava
Last month I had the opportunity to go to Au Bon Pain in M-block market, of Greater Kailash (Weird Market, its practically a labyrinthine of shops, so easy to get lost in), in New Delhi, while I was looking for a quick sandwich and something to drink along with it. Au Bon Pain (French for The Place with Good Bread) is an American bakery that offers sandwiches, salads, soups, shakes and smoothies. Au Bon Pain is particularly famous for their nutrition transparency and (apparently) quality breads.

The Bon Pain I visited looked a lot like a hybrid between Dunkin Donuts and Subway, with Subway's Sandwich making counters and a seating that looked a lot like a Dunkin Donuts outlet in Central Delhi. To be honest, I felt that the space they spent on providing the dining experience was a bit of an overkill. Personally, for something like Sandwiches, I'd rather get them packed and eat them on the go, instead of “dining”. But none the less, Au Bon Pain's GK Outlet is pretty well designed. I liked the placement of the transaction counter. It's just next to the exit door. So basically, you don't have to go out of the way to pay for your sandwiches and it doesn't feel like that they'd much rather have your money first, (Restaurants and Cafes that have the counters next to the food preparation tables fall in that category).

On my visit, I got a Caprese Sandwich, a Veg Pesto Club Sandwich and a Mango Smoothie. A word about the packaging here, it's great. On my way back, l took a wrong turn and landed on the other side of the market (like I said, it's a labyrinthine of sorts), and had to traverse through the entire market to reach the parking. And all the while the package was swinging in my hands But the smoothie was pretty securely packed and didn't leak.

I was pretty impressed with the Smoothie itself. It was delightfully rich with the right mixture of milk and ice-cream, and extremely fulfilling. If I ever go back to Au Bon Pain, it'll be for the smoothie.

The sandwiches are okey-ish. The breads are good. The sandwich is pretty well made, none of the sauces or fillings ooze out like Subway's do, and the sandwiches are pretty filling. But there are two big problems that I have with the sandwiches. First, There's just too much garlic in the breads for my liking. Second and this is the major issue, the sandwiches leave a dry aftertaste. This is true for most of the sandwiches that I've had. With all the preservatives that are added, there's a characteristic dry after taste that they induce. This is true for the Subway Sandwiches too, but Au Bon Pain which is providing a much more premium experience, doesn't do much to improve upon it.

For me, what could have been a truly great experience was hampered by just a few trivialities. The place is so much better than the rest of the crowd but with their dry after taste, the sandwiches really are underwhelming. Which is why I'll probably not visit Au Bon Pain again, the smoothie is great but not enough an incentive to go again.

--
P.S. Couldn't click the pics myself when I visited the place, Have used some on Zomato Instead.

A Trip to the Sodabottleopenerwala Cafe

Vidit Bhargava

A few days back, I finally had the opportunity to visit the Sodabottleopenerwala (Yep, that’s somebody’s surname!) Cafe, in Delhi’s Khan Market, which I had previously missed for a much more unique menu of La Bodega, a fine dining Mexican Restaurant, but more on that in a later posted. Sodabottleopenerwala is the kind of crowded Iranian Cafe, that you’ve probably heard exists in places like Mumbai. It’s extremely noisy but the Cafe insists that it is what they intended to make.

Getting the Irani Cafe touch right, Sodabottleopenerwala is unabashedly skeuomorphic, it looks like a Parsi home that was made into a cafe. Proud to be Parsi, the cafe has a lot of references to them, like the stairway to the cafe, which is filled with the diminishing community’s family photographs, even the menu items contain some of the culture references to them. If you were looking for an Irani-Cafe experience in Delhi, I’d recommend this to you. It’s super good at emulating one. 

But perhaps, in capturing the essence of an Irani Cafe, Sodabottleopenerwala also looses its productivity. It appears crowded, noisier than it should be (It’s probably the construction of the cafe which helps in resonating the noise) and slightly clumsy. This is not the cafe I want to go to have a peaceful afternoon of work. 

Sodabottleopenerwala probably has the most innovative menu I’ve seen in a long time. With food items termed as “Aloo Aunty’s Vegetable Cutlet” and “Jardaloo Ma Tarkari” it’s hard to not notice how much Sodabottleopenerwala Cafe loves it’s Parsis. (And, yes, there’s an Eggs Kejriwal too, if you are feeling too political).

So after some ‘intense’ reading of the menu, which involved me having to read the descriptions thoroughly as the names weren’t really indicative of the nature of the dish but rather the people who seemed to have liked it, I ordered the ‘Aloo Aunty’s Vegetable Cutlet’ , ‘Tardeo AC Market Mamaji’s Grilled Sandwich’ and a ‘Sikanje Bin’. The service was a little late, these three items took over half an hour to get served.

Food Items at the Sodabottleopenerwala Cafe have the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Everything, from the mint-beverage I had to the vegetable cutlet has a very unique and strong taste. Nothing tastes neutral, there’s an excess of some or the other ingredient, but that’s not to say, it tastes bad. It actually tastes pretty good. 



The Mint and Dried Plum drink I had was pretty refreshing, and tasted a bit like Spremuta. The Sikanje Bin is highly refreshing. Even the grilled sandwich was pretty well done too. Although, it had excess onion to it, it tasted very original and was completely different from all the other grilled sandwiches i’ve had. If I were to go back to Sodabottleopenerwala I’d probably order the Sikanje Bin and Grilled Sandwich. The Same however cannot be said for the Vegetable Cutlet, which just had too much garlic to taste good. The Vegetable Cutlet leaves a very very sharp taste in the mouth and is avoidable. 



On the Whole, the Experience was a different one. Did I enjoy it? Yes, for the sheer delight of experiencing something completely new and different from the regular cafes. Will I go back to the Cafe? Probably Not. I enjoy less noisier places.

Cafes in Delhi - Amici

Amici - Khan Market
Vidit Bhargava



Amici is perhaps the most Authentic Italian cafe you’ll find in Delhi. The moment you enter the place, you know Its not the regular Italian food you get in the city. There’s little indian-ization done to the menu. You won’t find Paneer as a topping here or a super spicy pasta, what you’ll find instead is some really different and exciting Italian food. The taste can take sometime getting used to here. At first you might feel its a little too bland but the taste actually grows on you and eventually you like nothing other than this!

Of the pizzas, you’d be missing out if you didn’t try their calzone verde. It’s a completely different pizza. The pizza is folded here, so the toppings and cheese are inside it. The cheese is slightly different from what you have on your regular pizzas and the taste is awesome! 

If you are looking for a pasta, I suggest the Arrabiata, It's pretty good!

But What’ll really make your day at Amici is the Italian beverage by the name of “Spremuta”. It’s something you’ll seldom find anywhere else and it’s got this slightly tangy taste to it and it’s highly refreshing.

As a cafe Amici is nicely constructed, especially the mezzanine where you get a good view of their wooden oven on one side and the balcony on the other. The space isn’t cramped up or cozy like Big Chill and that is in fact a good thing, you can even bring your work along with you, this is also one of the quieter cafes. They even had a bladeless fan from Dyson sometime back which is much less noisier than the normal ones. The service is quite decent too, on one occasion, the manager didn’t hesitate to make a trip to the chef to clear our query about the ingredients.

To sum it up, if you like Italian and are in Delhi, Amici is the place to go and once you get a hang of the taste, you won’t like anything else!

Rating: ****

--

P.S. Didn't get time to click the photos, Used Zomato's instead, so thanks to the Zomato users who posted the images there. (The Spremuta is mine though)