Dig In

This new cafe mimics a college cafeteria with its special DU menu and pocket-friendly options.

Citrus Burger

Surrounded by trees that are the pleasant kind of shady lies the recently opened Diggin cafe, opposite Gargi College in Anand Lok. The cafe enjoys a large DU patronage, not least because it’s located right next to two girls’ colleges, Gargi and Kamla Nehru. And it resembles a college cafeteria, if you studied in a big-budget Bollywood movie anyway. Spread over two floors with both a balcony and a courtyard, indoor and al fresco seating, brick walls and stoned flooring, wrought-iron and wooden furniture, and huge glass windows — the space is an oasis of calm from the bustle outside.

The menu is largely Italian with a smattering of American dishes, to leaven the focaccia, as it were. So apart from the perennial P’s, there are burgers, sandwiches and a variety of appetisers and main courses, as well as a selection of shakes, smoothies, teas and coffees. There is a special DU menu (keep your college ID handy), wherein the portion sizes are slightly smaller but the prices are also a fraction of the main menu, perhaps another reason why the restaurant exudes such a collegiate bonhomie. Falling prey to it, we decide to go old school, or high school at any rate, and stick to ordering shakes, a burger and a pizza.

The Belgian Chocolate and Ferrero Rocher Shakes come first, and are in essence, liquefied versions of their respective chocolates, chilled to a delicious degree. The Pesto Pepperoni pizza is the first main to arrive, served steaming on a wooden board — a thin disc loaded with a pesto infused marinara sauce, pepperoni, mozzarella, and like the number of cool kids at a conti party, a sprinkling of torn basil leaves — and is crisp, meaty and well, darn tootin’.

The Citrus burger walks in to the party last, an edible structure as tall as it is wide, comprising a minced chicken patty studded with jalapenos and olives and studded with pepper, enrobed in some lettuce, tomatoes, a zesty mayo and a burger bun. One can only employ the Jughead method: clamp firmly between your hands and chow down. Apart from a de trop of pepper, the burger goes down as easily as the pizza, stuffing us in the process.
For dessert we order the Chocolate Fondant, a warm molten chocolate cake served with French vanilla gelato. The dessert takes about 15 minutes to prepare so order accordingly. It comes poised like a Polaroid picture, or an Instagram picture at any rate, the cake ready to spew its chocolate-y molten innards, with the gelato perched coyly on flower-shaped biscotti, right in the path of the deluge. It plays out exactly like that as we dig in our spoons and the cake, like a seemingly hard professor in a college film, cracks open its crust and proves to be a real softie on the inside. This is a movie we’d like to repeat.

Meal for two: Rs 1,200 (including taxes)

Address: Anand Lok Shopping Complex, Anand Lok. Contact: 40800081

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food review