Picking Yummy Morsels

Walking out of office for a quick lunch and a few laughs with a girlie gang is a complete life saver when you feel life isn’t taking you the places you were promised as part of the grown up deal. 

And so it happened that four of us escaped for a quick lunch last week – the destination Dana Choga a restaurant with a long history of feeding Gurgaon people delicious, Punjabi food in a no nonsense straight to the tummy way.

Accompanied by giggles and gossip we landed up at the Atul Kataria Chowk outlet and were lucky enough to grab the last empty table before the place completely filled up with the lunch crowd. The fact that the place was packed on a hot weekday said something good about the food.

Now two of us are Non-Veg eaters with a vengeance, one sways in between and the fourth is a strict vegetarian and this means that we always end up ordering too much.

After much asking around for each other’s preferences we settled on a crisp honey chilli lotus stem and some soft drinks as starters followed by a dal makhani, dum aloo, chatpata murg, raita, plain rice and assorted breads for the main course.

The food took about ten minutes to come which is quick by any standards however so hungry were we that we asked for and polished off the onions in vinegar bowl and also got the waiters flustered by constantly asking them when the food would arrive. 

We drummed on the table, looked at the kitchen door, followed every dish with greedy eyes to their respective tables and did everything we normally never do. Like one of us mentioned, ‘I can do this only when my daughter is not around.’  It sure is fun to revert to college days at times.

To cut a long wait short – the food arrived and we dug in. The crispy lotus stems were gone before you could say hello. The main course arrived and I really loved the chatpata murgh so stuck to eating it with raita and hot tandoori rotis with more vinegar soaked onions. The other informed that the rest of the food was yummy too. I had a bite of this and that and found it to be so.

Lunch over we got the remaining food packed and then ran back to office happy and thrilled with our little rendezvous.

Double Delight

On Saturday the hubby and I planned to run a few errands and in doing so landed up at the Vasant Square Mall in Vasant Kunj around 12 noon, imagine my delight when I spot a Dana Choga Kitchen there. I abandon all plans for grocery shopping and convince him that shopping on a filled tummy is much better so we should eat first.

A DCK is a quick service limited menu offering from Dana Choga which offers their yummy delicious food in just right for one sized portions.

We had a quick look at the menu and I gleefully settled for a ghosht biryiani while the hubby went for a murg malai tikka thali which came with a creamy smoky dal makhani, laccha paratha, raita, chutney and a bit of salad.

To while away the three minutes they took to serve our food we also ordered a mango and a jamun gattagat – thirst quenchers with a lovely desi twist.

The food was amazingly good and I polished off the biryiani at amazing speed and secretly resented the hubby the few spoons that he tried as well.

Grinning from ear to ear (a good biryiani does that to me) I asked if we should have something sweet and found that they had something called a pista fudge. Now usually I don’t ask for sweets and even less new ones that I don’t know anything about. BUT DCK had won me over with their just right food and I was willing to experiment.

The sweet dish came, three brown balls in a cream coloured base with a few pista shavings on top. Didn’t look like much but then I had a spoonful and it was yum. Not too sweet, not too chilled just right. It literally hit my nonexistent sweet spot.

Oh did I mention the outlet though small was spotlessly clean and cheerful too. The food was delicious and we barely managed to cross the Rs.500 mark.

Lovely food. Full marks to Dana Choga especially the DCK concept.