Pop Goes the Nawab

Dum Affairs makes for a decent Awadhi restaurant,as long as you tell your server to put off the music.

Dum Affairs makes for a decent Awadhi restaurant,as long as you tell your server to put off the music.

One could argue that a restaurant is a temple for the five senses. The newly-opened Dum Affairs located on the third floor in the main South Extension-2 market does a decent job of catering to four of those senses,but messes up big time when it comes to sound. The restaurant,at first glance,seems more a contemporary Continental restaurant rather than an Awadhi eatery. The interiors have polished wooden flooring,vaguely white stucco-like walls and modern table and chair set-ups which are decorated in a manner again more appropriate to a French brasserie. Ironically,the table napkin held in elaborately carved holders is wrinkly and a rather dubious shade of white. It is at this point we realise the true identity crisis of the restaurant. Is that Bryan Adams singing in an Awadhi restaurant? It is,and worse is to follow.

Doing our best to ignore the music,we browse through the menu,which has enough spelling mistakes to make Jhonny Walker turn in his grave. The first section is titled For the Health Freaks,and consists of salads,and seems as incongruous in an Awadhi restaurant as the starter we order: Chapli kebab. The chapli is a kebab from the North-Western frontier region,so what its doing in an Awadhi restaurant,were not entirely sure. At this point Justin Bieber decides to whine to his baby,and we give up trying to figure out the eaterys eccentricities.

Since the restaurant specialises in dum cooked foods,we decide to stick to the tried and tested dishes for our mains and order a Dum Ka Murg,Gosht Nihari and naan,to be followed by a Jaggery and Fennel Phirni.

The chapli,despite looking somewhat like a galouti,is its diametric opposite. It is chewy with a strong flavour,making it a rather heavy starter. The mains appear as soon as the kebabs finish. The chicken is redolent in spices,lavished with carved boiled eggs and generously garnished with pistachio and almond flakes with an extremely thick gravy. In fact,it is rich to the point of being ostentatious,which detracts slightly from what would have been a fabulous dish if not crowded with so many different elements. The mutton,however,is spot on. Melt-in-the-mouth meat,ready to drop off the bone,swimming in a sublime gravy,it is perfectly flavoured and balanced. This dish hogs the attention of our naan.

Dessert,however,turns out to be as disastrous as the Backstreet Boys comeback tour,with an extremely grainy consistency and the unmistakable flavour of Milkmaid. After a single bite,we go back to the mutton which luckily hasnt been cleared away yet.

Price for Two: Rs. 2700 (including taxes,excluding alcohol)Address: E 12,South Extension 2 Contact: 66487893 ext:29

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