Healthy yet amazing pizzas anyoneIJ MEENAKSHI RAO takes you to cafe bhane.WIP for a non-cheesy delight that's a real revelation
There are pizzas and pizzas bursting out of Delhi’s myriad Italian joints, as also those unbecoming multi-cuisine eateries that the Capital so erringly dotes on. Then there are cafes and cafes in this overcrowded foodie junction, so doing reviews for this all pervasive and much abused (read adapted) Italian bread is not always a welcome assignment.
However, despite the overdose, a Pizza Hut and Domino’s-nurtured population of comfort food sadly does not know anything about a good, hand crafted, relatively healthy pizza. That’s where unassuming chefs like Gaurav Karki and his cafe owner Anand come in with certain delight. Just to check the pulse of the pizzatose young population about different kind of pizzas, without that overflowing cheese burst that has become the norm of ill-health in the junk section, I took along my nephew for an opinion.
For Gaurav and the oddly named cafe bhane.WIP at the well-heeled but less visited Meherchand Market, it was a positive verdict that their thin crust, non-cheese preparation got after sitting pretty on the young one’s taste buds.
The pizza at cafe bhane.WIP is as different and becoming as the couture it’s owner sells as core business. The cafe perched above a clothes lining that the owner sells through two young designers, is simple and stark, talking only about its hand-crafted coffees and ice-creams, scrabble boards, laptop charging points and comfortable seating arrangements.
The showcase here is different too, what with (yes you heard me right) a display of veg and non-veg collection! And if you thought this menu signifies their eats you could be on a lost road. They are veg and non-veg shoes, “concept shoes” as a young Ruchi tells you, to sell the same old thing in a brand new garb.
Karki, who presented the awesome pizza in pesto and olive sauce (we recommend him to make that one his signature eat) without much of a fuss, is not one of those from the army of pretentious chefs who talk big about food and throw a lineage of Spanish, Michellin and Italian training romps at you. He is not even from a tony F&B institute or a propah pizzeria with lots to boast about.
He learnt on the job at a Hauz Khas Village eatery that has since closed down. Now, with .bhansi, he is in charge of everything — experimenting, sourcing and executing chef specials, though much of it without or very little cheese, as the owner is a vegan who wants vegan pizzas to be his contribution to Delhi.
To say Karki has done well would be an understatement. His rocket leaves pizza is a specimen of good innovation and his pizza base, thin crust and crispy, is simply amazing without a modicum of cheese thrust on it, doing just as well, with some flakes for decoration. The baby potato pizza may not score up there but the raspberry one is a tad different though sweet but worth a taste.
“The pizzas we have introduced just recently so views on it will help me a lot, specially because I am trying them without any cheese,” Karki says humbly. The tomato and other sauces, like the delicious and flavourful olive and pesto sauce, give life to Karki’s pizzas, as do his ice creams.
Though there’s a mango burst on the dessert menu, the homemade strawberry and goat cheese is a speciality that melts in your mouth with amazing taste and smoothness.
So next time you go shopping at Meherchand Market, just walk in to .bhane for a healthy, hatke and wholesome pizza party.