In a NUtshell

A kulcha specialist with a small menu & very good food, worth the 30+ km drive from gurugram – only that we ended up eating a month’s quota of butter in one meal!!!! (Pun intended)

Address & other details: baljeet’s

Meal for 2: ₹180 onwards

Cuisine type : vegetarian only

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Realized that we submitted the receipt while ordering the food.

YUMMRAJ rates all the food items & then gives 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

Our friend varun, who has grown up in west delhi has always been telling us that we are biased to eateries in south & central delhi. Yes, that’s probably true. Wanted to correct that in the last two years after returning to delhi NCR in 2019 after a 4 year stint in mumbai.

But then came COVID lockdowns & restrictions.

Intend to cover west & north delhi in the next few years as things normalize.

So it was Varun who suggested that he will take us to his favorite restaurant baljeet’s who spells KULCHA as KOOLCHA.

On a fine weekend morning we set out on a 30km drive to eat koolchas for breakfast:), with varun along.

Since it was morning, parking was a cakewalk. There were two guys to help in parking but that was not needed. Am sure in evenings it Wud b a huge challenge to park here.

There was a section for takeaways – in the morning also we saw a big queue there.

We went to the other section. Unlike most restaurants or takeaways, baljeet’s had a hybrid system – closer to that of a food court. There was a counter to place an order, make payments. One had to pay, collect receipt & walk to the dining hall & submit the receipt so that they can serve the food.

As we got the receipt of payments the counter, we walked in to the dining hall.

The dining hall had many high tables (made of stainless steel) but no chairs. So role wud stand around the table, eat & go. Sharing table with strangers is common, in case there aren’t enough people in your group to surround a table.

Servers of the restaurant came & gave us plastic plates & cutlery as we stood around a table. They also came & served us raw onions dunked in Chutney, boondi raita & chholay.

They kept on asking for refills of chholay & the rest of the condiments.

They took the receipt from us & in some time got us the parathas we ordered – piping hot, made to order, butter oozing out from everywhere.

Loved the food.

Detailed description – in case u hv the time to njoy reading:

We ordered the koolcha that varun said he has had a ‘million times’. Infact he said he had never cared to look at the menu.

Mixed koolcha – potato, veggies &. Little bit of paneer. This was closest to my memory of excellent kulchas in Amritsar about a decade back. I grossly dislike the bread Kind of round shaped objects passed off as kulcha in most parts of delhi NCR.

The outer layer of the koolcha was crisp. The filling was outstanding- balance of taste. The ratio of filling & the outer layer was optimal. The interplay of textures of outer layer & the filling was enjoyable. Flavors of butter spiked up the experience. Absolutely loved it. Rate it 4.5/5

We also tried paneer koolcha. This one turned out to be way more blander than the mixed one. Contrary to the mixed koolcha, it took us a bit of time to start liking this one. The flavors of paneer made their presence felt very well.

The taste was good though. Rate it 3.5/5

When we were done, the severs gave us gur (solidified jaggery).

Overall rating of baljeet’s averages out to 4/5.

I wud surely stick to their classic mixed koolcha in my next visit.