ITP Indian Travel Places: Food, Travel, Tourism Business Events and Trade Shows
Restaurant Name: Gulati Spice Market, Saket, New Delhi
Phone: +91 9958453636
Address: GF-17, Southern Park Mall, District Centre, Saket, New Delhi, India
Time: 11:00 AM – 17:00 PM
Meals for two: Rs. 1,200
Cuisines: North Indian, Mughlai, Biryani
Facilities: Delivery Only, Mall Parking, Table booking recommended
Gulati Spice Market, Saket, New Delhi: Decor
The newly renovated Spice Market is located on a single floor, but is a masterpiece of planning: it includes a large show kitchen, washroom, bar and dining space. There’s a valet parking service too: extremely useful at peak hours. Seating is for a mere 22 people, so the restaurant is wary of holding a reservation for more than 10 minutes. Music is played at a pleasant level and Spice Market, despite being an ‘offspring’ of Gulati at Pandara Road, has charted its own course. The interiors are sleek and international and the menu moves effortlessly from one era to another. There is a great deal of emphasis on small plates that have varying non-Indian touches. Sumit and Chiquita Gulati use their travels and Chiquita’s background to weave the menu around, rather than staples from the venerable bastion of Pandara Road.
Gulati Spice Market, Saket, New Delhi: Food
The best things I have tried on this menu include tandoori chicken (₹ 400/700) and CKP prawn pulao with kalvan and raita (₹ 700). The tandoori chicken was red, as it used to be in the 1960s, had just enough masala coating on the outside and was slightly smoky. As for the chicken itself, it was as succulent, flavorful and tender as could be expected in a brief searing inside a charcoal tandoor. Sumit Gulati tells me that while there’s a ban on using coal-fired tandoors indoors, one can make use of charcoal as a fuel. It was the most succulent, flavorful tandoori chicken I have enjoyed in many years. Part of Chiquita’s family is Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu (CKP), a community that is very well-known throughout Maharashtra but completely invisible in Delhi. Their spice blends are extremely flavorful and a hint of coconut goes into many preparations. I don’t think I have eaten a more appetizing, intensely flavorful pulao in a long while and the small, succulent prawns were the icing on the cake. Other dishes I tried included the novel edamame chaat (₹ 350) with house-made nimki and chaat masala: sophisticated and tangy at once; avocado galouti (₹ 400) pleasant enough but needed a lip-smacking dip for contrast; crispy prawns with balchao dip: great crunch but the dip either needs to be renamed or the recipe overhauled radically!
Plus & Minus:
Do go past the compelling appetizers: the mains are great.
