Cafe Lota is the one restaurant in Delhi that we/I may have eaten at on every trip to Delhi in the last 10 years. It’s certainly the restaurant we’ve eaten at the most. This is partly because it’s convenient to many of the places we visit in central-ish Delhi and for meeting up with friends who live in parts north and east; but it’s largely because we remain big fans of their menu of pan-regional Indian food, presented in contemporary’ish forms but without ever losing sight of their traditional anchors. We loved our first meals there in January 2014, not too long after they first opened, and we’ve continued to enjoy every meal we’ve had there since, even as the original chef departed and the restaurant’s own layout and menu kept evolving. Inevitable changes aside, many through lines remain from its beginnings; and so it’s no surprise that we enjoyed this meal very much as well. Here’s a quick report.

We met an old friend for lunch, someone we meet at Cafe Lota almost every time. We were there for an early lunch by Delhi standards and so were seated immediately. Delhi had already begun to heat up in mid-March but it was quite comfortable inside the restaurant. We got down quickly to ordering. The menus have a new look now, being conventional menu books, rather than the spiral-bound ones from just last January. And there’s a fair bit that’s new on them, and some things that used to be daily specials have taken up permanent residence. We ordered a mix of familiar and newer dishes.

First up, some cool, refreshing drinks. These comprised nimbu paani (refreshing with mint), watermelon juice, orange juice and aam panna (this was for me and was great). The missus also had a single estate coffee from Karnataka. The smaller plates began to arrive pretty quickly. First to arrive was the Sabudana Popcorn with Hari Mirchi Thecha, which was very good. Also very good was the Kerala Chicken Masala, served on an appam. The Mutton Samosas were fine but nothing very great. Surprisingly very good were the Ragi Chicken Momos. Why surprising? Well, one does not expect to find ragi/millet in momo wrappers. At some point the current trendiness of ragi/millets in foodie India will crest and/or become parodic but somehow it worked here.

Having got a number of smaller dishes, we only got three larger ones to share among us. The Kerala Vegetable Stew, also served with an appam, looked very much like the special Kaacha Aam Prawn Curry (prawn curry with green mangoes) but they obviously tasted nothing alike. Both were very good. But our favourite of the mains was probably the Khade Masale Ka Gosht, which the adults ate with rice and the boys ate with a very good Garlic Chur Chur Naan (chur chur just means the naan is crumpled and torn).

Even one as sweet as me must eat sweet things to end a good meal. We split their classic Apple Jalebi with Coconut Rabdi. As I always do, I loved the apple jalebis and found the rabdi to be a little too gritty with the ground coconut.

For a look at the restaurant, the menu and what we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much it all cost, for thoughts on service, and to see what’s coming next.

Service was very able: friendly, informed on the dishes and present when needed. Price? Rs. 7259 before tip or roughly $86. About $17/head. That’s not a cheap meal in Delhi but you can easily spend a lot more. Odds are good we’ll be back again.

Alright, what’s next? I still have two more Delhi reports to come but first I’m going to try to make some more headway on the Seoul reports, far more of which remain. I’m going to try to get the second part of my Noryangjin Fish Market report done tomorrow—the one that involves the actual eating that happened there. Next week I’ll probably have a report on another of our fine dining meals in Seoul. In between, there will be another Twin Cities report: we are scheduled to eat Thai food in St. Paul tomorrow.