The Plate of Plenty

Enter the restaurant,and a man in a traditional Rajasthani garb,complete with the turban and handlebar moustache,greets you. You take your seats,and immediately a waiter is by your side. But instead of handing you the menu,he gives you a welcome drink. Meanwhile,a bearer brings warm water in a golden jug for you to wash your hands with. Glance back at the table,and a gleaming steel plate,complete with eight katoris and one flat bowl,stares back at you. Welcome to Rajdhani,the restaurant that doesn’t believe in menus.

“We want to be known as a ‘thali’ restaurant. Our restaurant has recipes of over 22,000 dishes and counting,all delicacies from Gujarat and Rajasthan,to give our customers the flavour of novelty. Instead of a regular menu,we serve our customers eight different dishes,never repeating a dish a second time in an entire month,” says Indraneel Mydeo,of the restaurant.

When we take our seats,we are greeted with a cold,refreshing glass of aam panna. At the same time,waiters start serving appetisers. First up is a khatta dhokla,which is slightly disappointing. The next hors d’œuvre is a corn tikki,which is lip smacking. Lightly fried,it has a hint of a mysterious masala that is very appealing.

For the main course,we are served dal baati,where the hard,crumbling baati is aptly complemented by the yellow dal and the slightly sweet churma. At the same time,three types of dals and five different vegetable preparations are served to us,with a freshly made phulka and a generous helping of ghee. Of the dals,the sweet dal tastes like a Gujarati home-maker was actively involved in its preparation,the chana dal is nice and soft without being all gooey,while the spicy dal is a brilliant accompaniment to the phulka. Among the vegetables,the capsicum-bhindi-paneer ki sabzi attempts too much,yet is not quite up to the mark,while the kairi chutney is delightfully sour. While going through this mountain of food,we are served with a cold glass of chhaas. When the food on the plate finally gets over,we are served with the sweet dishes of the day,which are aam ras,which tastes just a little bit like a popular mango-based fruit juice. On the other hand,one teaspoon of the shrikhand is like a sugar shock,it is so sweet.

The restaurant gets full marks for service and value for money. Some dishes are disappointing,but the overall experience is good,because of their belief in “serving slow cooked food faster than fast food.”