RutSum

Dilli Haat at Pitampura

This new Dilli Haat, which has been under construction for the past 2 years, was inaugurated by Shiela Dikshit, the CM of Delhi, on 29th April, 2008. Since the old Dilli Haat near the INA Market is quite famous, I decided to check out if the new one was worth it.

First things first, despite the fact that it is located in a very crunched area, this Dilli Haat, right now has a lit of open space, where you can just sit around if you aren’t looking around or shopping. This, in my opinion is nice, you don’t get to see clean open space much in Delhi these days.

It hasn’t been even a week since it’s inauguration, and you already have an entry fee of Rs. 15 for adults and Rs. 5 for kids. Now I obviously don’t really mind paying such a small amount, but considering that almost 70% of the shops are yet to be occupied, it makes no sense.

With the few shops that were open, which were only around 60-70 right now, which contained mostly ethnic stuff; from different states of India - handicrafts, fabric, baskets, ornaments, and wall-hangings. The only shop that I found interesting was one that was selling scientific stuff for travellers like watches, compasses, magnifying glasses and globes. The rest of them were almost deserted, with a few women quickly glancing through traditional dresses from different states. My advice on the shops - only for women and a select group of intellectual men who like to collect ethnic stuff.

After a quick glance at the shop, we moved towards the place where we saw some crowd - the food area. Though there were supposed to be food courts from different states, but if you take a close look, most of them have the same set of food to offer, with 1 or 2 specialities local to their regions. We decided to try out the famous vada pav from the Maharashtra stall, worth Rs. 30. It was decent, but not good enough to make me crave for more. I expected it to be something really addictive, considering that it is the first thing that any local Mumbaian would tell you to try in their city. Delhi is famous for Gol Gappas, and I’m sure that any Mumbaian too, would agree that Gol Gappas are addictive.

For the main course, we moved ahead to the Jharkhand stall, which had nothing special to offer. Anything on the menu would be available easily at any local restaurant in Delhi. We ordered butter chicken along with nan (and some coke :D). The service was quick, and in contrast to most other food courts at Delhi, these guys actually believed in customer satisfaction. When we told them that we weren’t satisfied with the amount of gravy in their butter chicken, the guy at the counter quickly did some checks with his staff and asked us to be seated. He quickly served us with another platter of butter chicken for free, and this time with tons of gravy. I was highly pleased by this gesture, but since we we’re already full, we asked him to take it back. Another thing that I forgot to add - the food was awesome, it’s probably the best butter chicken I’ve had in months.

We left soon after that, as there wasn’t much to see. Overall, right now, this Dilli Haat is a really boring place, and would take a lot of time to match the standards of it’s parallel in south Delhi.

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