Backyard does not boast a fancy menu but surprises you with its innovative presentation and quirky decor. By Bilal Vohra
With 7,000 plus restaurants in NCR alone, it is really hard to find “that something new, which didn’t exist” but then there are surely places that are a soothing change to the eyes, as well as your belly, which is always a welcome sign. Enter Backyard, a place that is perfect for lunches and evening drinks. The place works wonder in any weather — for a great windy day you have a patio and for the regular, not so cooperative Delhi days, it’s the main floor which has a rustic feel on the inside with windows all around and soothing music.
The place is barely three months old and still gets a full house on weekends even with a total cover of more than 70 seats. The menu is an usual mix of American and European best but championing the food is not an easy task. To start with, we ordered the Prawn tom yum soup where inch-long galangal pieces, with their usual pungency, were quite a turnoff, making it a bad start. But a Greek melon salad was a quick cover up with fresh fruits, feta and light balsamic dressing the colourful palette is something that appeals to the eye as well.
From the appetisers section, the vada-pav slider was an exciting new entrant. We were honestly glad to see the concept of a slider being stretched beyond the burgers; which makes sense to us as consumers. If we are in a group and do not want to fill our appetite with just one dish or do not want to get messy, we can simply order a slider and get a fair view. The taste and sauces of the dish was a perfect reminder for us from the streets of Mumbai and Pune. Their Saigon chicken, on the other hand, is a great choice for the white meat lovers, with its BBQ sauce and lemongrass infusion imbibing subtle flavours, although the pita roti was really not required alongside the skewers.
Moving on to the bigger portion, we ordered the Moroccan burger which was a juicy lamb patty with an interesting sauce that was an amalgamation of mayonnaise and hung curd, giving it a sour yet creamy texture, with crisp potato wedges on the side — a great choice for the real meat lovers. The Spaghetti lamb ragout was also a pleasant experiment with minced lamb over a bed of spaghetti. Mostly, people resort to Penne or Farfalloni when it comes to ragout but this one was different and certainly a great choice.
The ‘Salmon says’ was a funny name for a fine dish — a perfect pink coloured and single side skinned salmon steak on a bed of mashed potatoes and healthy greens was surely one of the healthiest meals we could have expected.
The place in all was a winner in our eyes with warm interiors and dishes that not many would like to fidget around with, like the gnocchi, ravioli and a no-cheese pizza.