I love eating good food (and it shows! :-D). Yesterday evening, the entire family (that's about 10 people) went to this place called Pind Balluchi on Ring Road, right next to the Lajpat Nagar flyover. Actually this was my second visit. Chikki, Gagan, Montu and I had been there a couple of weeks back and had loved the food. We had Dal Makhani, Paranthas and "Keema Kaleji, Gurde, Kapure" along with Chicken Biryani and a couple of kebab platters. We loved the food and the bill - Rs. 1000, tip included! The decor was unique - they have tried to give it the look of ancient diners of northern rural India, the classic dhabas - and the service efficient. We really enjoyed the experience - Chikki was talking about it for the next several days, asking everyone to check it out.
So this weekend, when we all decided to go eating out, Pind Baluchi it was again! I called these guys up sometime in the morning to book a table and was told that they don't reserve tables, but if we reached before 8 pm, we should get a table easily. Throughout the day, the three of us kept telling the others about how nice the place is, what great food they serve, and that we should eat lightly during the day because we won't stop eating in the evening. So everyone was really excited and charged up when all of us got in the two cars by around 7:50 (when you have four members of the fairer sex going with you, believe me, sticking to timelines is impossibly hard) We reached at around 8:05. Imagine my surprise to see around 4-5 families already there, waiting to be seated, in a already full restaurant. We were told to wait for about 45 minutes, so the ladies went driving around the city, not wanting to wait outside in what was a slightly warm evening. Now my father likes his to have his food on time, and was not too happy about it. I tried placating him, telling him how much he will enjoy the food once we get started, but was not feeling so sure. This had not started right.
We were seated in what seemed like eternity, but was actually just 35 minutes. My family is mostly vegetarians, it’s just the three of us who eat non-veg on a regular basis. So we ordered a bunch of veg dishes besides what we had last time. Imagine our surprise when we discovered that none of the other dishes was great. In fact, even the preparations we had last time were not quite the same. Only the dal and the biryani stood up to the high bar that was set in our last visit. So we ate mostly dal and biryani, and ordered a few more helpings. I love dal and had a lot of it along with a roti and a parantha. A trick, which I have learnt from Gagan, is to add a bit of curd and a dollop of butter to the dal. This makes it even better. Try it out. I did the same for Gudda, my little cousin, and he loved it, asking me to do the same to his second helping. Overall, it was not bad, but nowhere close to the gastronomical nirvana that we had experienced last time.
I think what went wrong was that when we had eaten here for the first time, it was on a week-day and the place was not too crowded. The week-end crowd made everything run out of steam - the food, the service and the air-conditioning! What did not help was that we were in the second lot - I am sure if we had arrived earlier the food would have been better. A bit of a disappointment, but as my uncle pointed out, we still had a lot of fun because we were all together!
So I haven't given up on these guys and will certainly return, but it will not be on a weekend.
