YUMMRAJ demytifies the legend of Kake da Hotel
In a nutshell:
Perfect value for money proposition with some super YUMM, some just about YUMM & some ordinary food.
Address & other details: Outer circle CP
Meal for 2: Rs. 160 onwards
Cuisine type: nonvegetarian & vegetarian
Short Description – in case u r in a hurry:
As most of my Indian readers wud know, ‘Hotel’ here refers to a restaurant.
If good ambience is a must for u stepping into an eatery, Do not go here. U might come across uncomfortable scenes like swarms of flies, a guy lying down in the first floor corner, loud co-diners , heaps of semi processed onions or worst, even a rat. However, if u wanna have good to great food at prices lower than imagination, check this place out.
A restaurant that has been around for 80 years, Kake da hotel has quite a following. Situated in the outer circle of Connaught place, the hotel, like its neighbours (National Restaurant, Royal Restaurant etc), has a tiny seating area on the ground floor & has a slightly spacious first floor. The first floor is supposedly for ‘family’ crowd but I prefer the ground floor as that shows the real character of the place.
Very Few ladies cud be seen on the ground floor that is usually packed with individual / groups of men. Unknown people share tables due to lack of space. The area is quite crammed – u can hear almost every word that is being spoken in the table next to u.
The entrance to the Restaurant is beside a Glass front that has become smoky. Behind the Glass wall are a row of 8 – 10 dekchis (huge metal containers) on which meats of different kinds r constantly being slow cooked.
People walk in, order a curry, eat that with as many rotis they want, ask for just gravy coz that costs less (than ordering a full repeat of the dish with meat).
As soon as order is placed, the curry is picked up from the dekchi to serving plate & served immediately. The gravy is usually all over the plate & no one bothers to clean that up before serving to the customer.
There are several types of rotis on offer & Roti takes a while to make & serve – ‘garma garam’.
All food is made from pure desi ghee – proclaims a writing on the wall. In some dishes that comes out very clearly, in some others it does not.
By Delhi standards the prices r a steal. Price of the curries is approx. INR 130 – 140 per plate & rotis start at INR 5 per piece!!!
Service is as fast as it can get. Waiting staff have been around for years & some of them have become numb. They r obviously not ‘Hotel Management trained’ like their swanky restaurant counterparts – just being a normal nice human being yields good results. I tried asking our waiter for a recommendation. ‘All is good’ was the answer. I tried 3 times with interval of 10 – 15 minutes. Answer was consistent. He was however very attentive of the way we were finishing up. As soon as we were left with 25% of the roti, he wud appear – Do u want another one?
Detailed description – In case u have the time to njoy reading:
We ordered for a mutton curry to start with. The mutton was soft but not melt in the mouth. Pieces from all over the goat cud b found in the curry. The taste was good but not great. The gravy was ordinary without a twist…………….not the level expected from a Legend. I wud give this 3/5.
The roti was 5mm thick, made of atta, perfectly crisp at the corners & soft within. Excellent I wud say.
Post the mutton came Delhi’s famous ‘Butter Chicken’. This was very good to taste as it is but was not the real Butter chicken. The real one usually has a creamy texture & has cashew paste added to it. The one here was just a tomato base.
In terms of taste, the gravy was not at all tomatoee inspite of having loads of tomatoes in it. The gravy was infact very good to taste. The chicken was soft & had the perfect texture. I wud give this dish a 3.5/5 .
I just got a comment regarding authenticity. Look forward to ur views as well.
The third item that we had was Keema Kaleji – Goat meat mince with goat liver. This dish had a layer of ghee on the top & the gravy had the flavour of ghee & masalas. The flavours were as good as they cud get & so was the taste. I wud give this a 4/5.
Overall the rating of food at Kake adds up to 3.5/5.
I haven’t tried the vegetarian food here but I have not heard great about that either. I wud revisit this place to try the saag meat that have heard a lot about. Will keep u posted.
Dear yummraj…..
Love ur posts and reviews…… But slightly disagree on the butter chicken, though its not as good as other places offer… but the authentic butter chicken never has a cashew base ,.. its the tomato gravy always only…as confirmed to me by the moti mahal people ( the so called inventors)
anyway…. enjoyed the review again…Keep up the good work 🙂 🙂
Regards
People either use cashew base / use something to cream it up – color becomes light orange as compared to just tomatoes. Thanks for pointing out though. Will research more.
Worst place to review or visit no even think about. This doesn’t even count in restaurant or dhaba category. I remember hearing about this shitty place and Rajinder-da-Dhaba when i was a small kid. We never visited these places back then also, even when there were very few restaurants or none in New Delhi. It was bcoz of the place/ area they are located at. Donno wot made you visit such shit holes.
Please don’t degrade you blog and review quality.
You can understand that with the no. of comments you have received on this review. I had to click the link on this page to give you feedback.
I have recently started reading your blog, but if these are the kind of reviews you are going to post, with intention to just fill your blog daily or weekly and not have quality in your content, then you would face the same fate that other food bloggers do, that is worry about quantity and not Quality.
Even great artists don’t display all of their work.
Be selective… 🙂
Hi, Thanks for ur detailed comment. My take on this – There r loads of places that people talk about & say good things about. I usually go to those & write my take on the same. If I do not go, I wud not b able to even know the truth or my version of the truth.
I suggest that u see the rating at the end of each. e.g. Kake’s rating is much lower than most of the other places I reviewed.
By the way ,a big thanks for being upfront. I really appreciate good constructive feedback.
I have tried today in this restaurant.
not a great expected food , tried liver and chicken tikka.
The gravy of mutton liver was good.
chicken tikka was 2.0/5.
but bec of its tradition it shd be tried atleast once.
thanks for the info.
Thanks for ur comments. Great that u have actually rated the food.
Looks like you missed out on all the good dishes at this place. I would go with the dahi meat, saag meat, keema, brain curry and the chicken curry. They also make a very good tandoori chicken. I have also noticed that mostly their rotis are slightly under cooked and so whenever I go there I order a naan for myself.
Hi, thanks for pointing out. I did try the tandoori chicken on previous occasion – did not find it that good. I found Tandoori Chicken at Kitchen of Awadh way better. Will try ur other recommendations. Thanks once again.
Feeling lazy to write much. food no good. Only pure desi ghee doesnt make good food. My 1.0/5
Thanks for ur comments. Pls share what u had so that the readers can know what to avoid.
excellent writing. As oppose to others i am quite excited about hearing such reviews as Delhi or Indian food, you can say is mostly cheap food 😛 and i am sure there are better places people have not heard about.
About the Dhaba i found it very overrated. Everything was just medicore and without anything new. Though Dishes someone mentioned is worth checking out i guess, like Dahi chicken/Saag meat.
In East Delhi i would recommend Nazeer on Mother Dairy Road. Good , cheap Non-veg and excellent Afgani Tikka.
thanks so much for sharing ur thoughts, piyush
3.5 is too much for Kake Da Hotel, having tried a lot of dishes I will not give it more than 2.5/5.
Well written article though, the place is exactly as u described 😛
Cheers
Many thanks for sharing ur rating, Aman. 🙂
Had tried kake da way back in 2001..butter chicken. I had decided never to visit it again. I believe they have recently opened branch in pancheel. I would suggest you to rate such places as “avoid” to keep some standard of a food blog.
I listened about this restaurant very much. Today I eas there with my younger brother. There was queues to enter I hv wait approx 15 min then I got entered. I ordered full tandoori chicken and 1 plate butter chicken. Both were horrible in taste. No such type if quality as the name. You can get even better from any street vendors. So I wouldn’t like to recommend this hotel/restaurant to anyone. You can say not value for money.
thanks for sharing, Gaurav.