In a nutshell:

A new North Indian & Mughlai food joint that serves traditional as well as innovative dishes , no nonsense grunge look interiors that stands out, polite but abysmally uninformed staff, well planned menu but still suffering from executional glitches that wud surely need constant quality control & monitoring by the Chef. A place to watch out for……………

Address & other details: Bhatti Kabab Company

Meal for 2: Rs. 500 onwards

Cuisine type : Vegetarian & Nonvegetarian

Disclaimer: All restaurants / eateries reviewed by YUMMRAJ were visited by YUMMRAJ himself & he has paid for the full Bill & tips also. http://www.yummraj.com does not have even one featured / sponsored reviews. YUMMRAJ believes in going to a restaurant in anonymity, as a normal guest, experience everything & give a honest account of the same to you.

I rate all the food items & then give a final overall rating which is a simple average of the individual item ratings. What the ratings stand for: 5 = Excellent, 4 = Very Good, 3 = Good, 2 = Fair, 1 = Disaster.

Short Description – in case u r in a hurry:

The restaurant has a very unconventional look. A silheri (ladle) used as a door handle at the entrance was innovative. As we walked in, we saw an open kitchen in the front with Japanese teppanyaki style ‘sit around the oven’ concept. On the right there was option to sit on bar stools facing the outside. Then there were normal wooden furniture with a ‘raw wood finish’.

Beyond that there was a metal wire mesh & some more seats inside. Inverted Buckets (Balti) were used as lamp shade. There was no false ceiling & one cud look straight into the A/C ducts in the ceiling. Talking about A/C, it was very hot within & we sweating sitting under A/C vent. In one corner there was a dump of packets & miscellaneous stuff. I was surprised that a new restaurant wud have such a thing on the restaurant floor.

The Menu card was just a printout & had many interesting ‘named’ stuff but sadly with no explanation along with the items. Usually in such situations the waiters come handy but here even that was not the case.

The guy waiting on us was a real nice guy but fumbled when asked questions about items on the menu. He introduced himself as ‘I will b ur server today. Pls get bk to me if u hv any problems’. I thought ‘shud I expect problems?’
The guy had no idea of the items in the menu card & couldn’t tell the difference between afghani burrah and aatishi burrah. We noticed 3 items that had ‘Africa’ in the name – Aftiki murgh, gosth, seafood. When asked about which country in Africa does this food originate from, he said ‘marination doosrey desh se aata hai!!!’

After 10 minutes of accepting the order of a funny sounding dish that had a goat meat & goat cheese combo, he came back & said, We do not have goat cheese, can I give Parmesan?’. Then he said ‘Bhatti da murg is our specialty’. After 15 minutes he came back & said ‘Sorry sir maal nahi aaya.’!!!!!!!!!!!! Are we kidding here? Even the chhotus at roadside dhabas are better trained & have better knowledge of available dishes.

There has been a whole lot of marketing activity around this place. Bloggers & critiques have been invited & this place has been discussed in many forums. Marketing efforts are full on. I have read quite a few positive reviews of this place. Needless to say, as per my policy, I went in anonymity & paid in full for the food I had. Since they did not understand I was a blogger, I was treated like a normal customer & hence got to see the real picture & it was not as shiny as it is being talked about. There are serious executional glitches that come in the way of the dining experience & consistency in food. All marketing efforts will go in vain if these continue…………

I was told by someone that this restaurant has been opened by a famous Chef. The experience showed sparks of brilliance but was ridden with immense issues. If the owners are reading this, I wud recommend them to pay more detailed attention to people, the way the place is maintained & of course to the consistency of food in terms of execution of Chef’s good recipes by the cooking staff.

Detailed Description – In case u have the Time to NJOY reading:

Welcome drink was peach ice tea. It was overtly sweet but good to taste.

The complimentary Papad was good but had very strong taste. The aftertaste interferes with taste of food when 1st dish arrives.

Complimentary Apple chutney had nothing much applish in taste. In texture we cud make out the apple. Spicy. Not bad just as it is.

We started our meal with mutton shutton naanza – a naan made in pizza way with topping of mutton boti & mutton Gilafi seekh. Capsicum onions thick roganjosh gravy. Mutton shutton naanza was super interesting. It had a naan as base bread, roganjosh gravy in place of the tomato base spread, two kinds of mutton kababz atop a layer of cheese. Must say that was innovative and good as well. The naan was perfect texture, the cheese layer was super good and there were kababs strewn atop. Loved this dish every bit and rate this at 4.25/5.

Afriki murg tikka  had 8 tiny pieces. Afriki murg tikka had Some good spices and tasted good. Chicken pieces were neither soft nor juicy but were still good to taste. I rate this at 3.5/5.

We chose Bihari boti kabab next. Bihari boti kabab were not juicy & some soft pieces some medium done pieces but good to taste, different mix of spices. A bit hot. Bihari boti had a good robust masala mix. However the pieces had something so wierd that we cud not think of a reason. Different pieces had different level of salt!!!! They had different levels of softness as well. Smaller pieces were more marinated. Others were less. In some marination reached the Center. In some others the center was tasteless! Masalas were very enjoyable though. I wud rate this a 3/5.

So far everything felt like good planning but not so good execution. Last dish that we had was a kashmiri  dish, mutton roganjosh. We had this with steamed rice. The gravy was surely very good to taste but was not on the authentic side . It was more kashjabi (Punjabi influenced Kashmiri) than Kashmiri. Influence of tomato and thick overall gravy is what made it closer to a punjabi dish. The original dish has thinner gravy and has the flavor of fennel seeds (saunf) as the overpowering source of flavor . The meats were well cooked and tasty. I wud rate this at 3.75/5 keeping in mind the authenticity bit. If I were to ignore the authenticity angle, the rating goes up to 4.5/5.

Overall the rating of food at this restaurant averages out to 3.6/5

There were 2 options for dessert and they did not Sound interesting – Gulab jamun and phirni. So ended the meal here.
I wud watch out this place, assuming that some time in future they will learn to execute dishes consistently & in a good way…………