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A spellbinding meal
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FOOD SPOT In search of some yummy food, Rahul Verma locates Bharatiyam at the Constitution Club
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I spent some of the best years of my life in central Delhi. Food-wise, the location couldn’t have been better. Those days, most restaurants were in Connaught Place, so all that I had to do was take a five-minute walk to the centre of Delhi̵
7;s food hub. On Sundays, I used to walk down to Chandni Chowk via Darya Ganj. I would pick up some dog-eared second-hand books, and then have a food fest in the Walled City.
For breakfast, there was always the UNI canteen which was right next door to where I lived. Towards the end of my stay there, the Andhra Bhawan canteen opened, and on special days, I would go there for a wonderful morning meal of steaming idlis, upma and a great array of Andhra chutneys.
Epicurean delights
There was one place, in the midst of all the epicurean delights, that I always saw as some kind of a food-starved desert. This was the Constitution Club on Rafi Marg. It was called a club, but the only purpose it seemed to serve those days was hosting weddings and receptions. It had a kitchen, and Members of Parliament would occasionally place an order there, and pick up their food. But it didn’t have a sitting arrangement, and nobody really saw the Constitution Club as a place where one went for food.
So, I was rather surprised the other day when I saw a swanky place in the club. The area was being renovated, and I had heard that major plans were afoot to make it more market-friendly. And the way to the ‘market’, of course, is through the stomach. So a restaurant called the Bharatiyam has just opened up there. It reminded me of 10, that wonderful restaurant on Parliament Street that has, alas, downed its shutters.
Bharatiyam has an open-air and an indoor seating arrangement. There is a lounge bar with sofas on one side, and 42 covers on the other. The interiors are neat, and the place looks welcoming. And since the weather is just right for sitting out in the open, you should perhaps head for the open-air extension. Bharatiyam, run by Anil Mathur, has a multi-cuisine menu. I would have preferred a single kind of cuisine, for that’s when food is at its best, unless, of course, we are talking about some of the old coffee shops.
This place offers Indian, essentially Mughlai and Punjabi, Chinese and Continental. The prices are similar to those in CP restaurants. Fried fish with tartar sauce, for instance, is for Rs.250, and a dish of prawns with brandy sauce is for Rs.450. The Indian menu has the usual suspects — murgh makkhan wala (Rs.230), mutton sagwala (Rs.240), zeera aloo (Rs.90) and paneer kadai (Rs.130).
The Chinese section has asparagus with garlic sauce (Rs.160), fish with spring onion (Rs.250) and chicken drumsticks (Rs.200).What it needs to do, however, is redo its menu card — which is full of mistakes. I don’t mind having a ‘stair-fried Chineses’ green (Rs.160) or even a ‘tafu’ (Rs.160) or a ‘custred’ (Rs.80). But I draw the line at eating a ‘chocolate mouse’ (Rs.80). I am not going to have that — chocolate, vanilla, or plain!
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