Bringing the thrill of bearish and bullish movements of stock market to the table, Cafe Dalal Street is well on its way to becoming the new talk of the town. By Jigyasu Joshi
Right after you enter Cafe Dalal Street, you might get a vibe of being a banker who is entering a place like his office but only with loud music and chilling out crowd playing Beer Pong. Well we did feel something like that. The big screens in the cafe were showing the price of selected drinks, which the place serves, getting high and low. The price here is changed according to the share market. So you might just be lucky to enjoy a drink as cheap as Rs90 or if it’s your bad then the same can cost to Rs399.
After settling down in the comfortable sofas, we looked around as the place was quite big and had good wraparound seating. Also the channel music was not very loud which was again a relief. In the starters, we ordered Tawa Paneer Golgappas. The golgappas were served with a makhani dip and the filling was small cubes of tawa paneer (in place of the traditional aloo-chana). They also had a non-vegetarian version of it with chunks of chicken and mayo dip. Weird as it may sound, the dish tasted exact opposite. The chicken was succulent and marinated with black-pepper and red chilli paste. Tad spicy, the stuffing with the thick mayonnaise dip made for a unique and near perfect starter we tasted in a long time.
Next we ordered crumb fried Jalapeño poppers and Banarasi mirch ka paneer tikka. We would rate the poppers average. The covering was of bread crumbs but the stuffing of cheese and Jalapeños did not result in a good combination. The paneer tikka was good. The chunks of cottage cheese were well covered with the paste of Banarasi mirch making the dish tad spicy.
Moving on, for the main course we ordered Amritsar Chur Chur naan and chole. The naan was well cooked and was large in size. The daal served with naan was a hidden dish we didn’t expect would be tasty. We ended up ordering some units of the daal itself. The black lentils were well cooked with the spices for long hours and served as a side dish with naan. A good side shot indeed. The chole were authentic Punjabi style. High on garam masala with sourness of imli, the chole were very much appreciated. The chick peas were soft and the gravy was also not too watery.
For dessert, we ordered a sizzling brownie. Not that the dessert looked fancy, it also tasted nice. The sweet hot brownie was served with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream and this formula never fails. A walk-in place at random.