We landed at Indigo Deli, Bandra, for a late breakfast this morning and saw that they are running a weekend eggs festival.
I looked at the menu and got very excited and tweeted a picture as I saw that they had quite a few Indian, primarily Parsi, egg dishes on it. I thought it was nice that a Western restaurant like Indigo Deli was reprising traditional Indian home recipes. The restaurant caters to the sort of crowd which rarely goes to small local Indian joints so this would be an opportunity for such diner to try out traditional flavours and dishes in my opinion.
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The menu |
There were howls of protest when I put up the picture of the menu on twitter though with objections being put to the high prices for dishes which are made at home.
Here are some of the tweets and do scroll down for what happened after that:
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@nikster007 guess that’s the price for AC and toilet and valet parking
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@Finelychopped haha. Yes. Or imported eggs
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@pinkalicious_88 @IndigoDelis the Parsi with me is thrilled to get it in a restaurant as she doesn’t make it at home
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@Finelychopped fair enough .. just for me it’s very difficult to digest as this is an everyday breakfast since childhood 🙂
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@pinkalicious_88 are you used to a moist version of the eggs. My wife found them too dry @IndigoDelis
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@Finelychopped @IndigoDelis yes it should be moist and not hard.. many put milk too to make it creamy which I don’t particularly like
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@Finelychopped @IndigoDelis awesome.. would always take another parsis word.. we are too possessive about the way eedas are made 🙂
Now I have a point of view on this.
I feel that if posh places are making a point of serving Indian food, then they can charge for the overheads that they charge for when serving international dishes.
At least that way, diners who would not go to traditional joints would try Indian fare here. If customers are willing to pay a lot more for the privilege of having air-conditioning, valet parking, table seating, clean loos, then so bit it. It’s their money.
Of course it would make more sense to go to time-tested places with good food and low prices but that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. There is a market for everyone. The truth is having a deliciously freshly made anda burjee at stall outside dadar station or Bade Miya is unfortunately not everyone’s cup of tea.
That’s the point I had made when Soda Bottle Opener Wala had launched in Mumbai and you can read my post on that here. I have not gone to Soda Bottle Opener Wala after the pre-launch so can’t comment on the food there though I liked what ate in Delhi’s Khan Market Soda branch earlier. Another example is that of Social which has Indian dishes such as parathas, samosa, kheema, dhansak and kori roti on their menu. Lot more expensive than in traditional places such as Crystal, Grant House, and Modern Lunch Home in Mumbai but the dishes at Social tasted bloody good. You can read about my experience of Khar Social here.
Some time back the chef at Bombay Canteen instagrammed a picture of the traditional sabu dana vadas that they had introduced and I saw a young Mumbai food blogger getting very excited by it. Of course, there have been excellent renditions of sabudana vadas at traditional hole in the wall Maharashtrian places such as Aaswad (not so hole in the wall), Prakash, Madhura and Vinay Health Home at 1/10 the prices and one wondered if the blogger had been to any of these.
Still, the blogger’s excitement at seeing the sabu dana vadas at the trendy Bombay Canteen builds my case that there is a market for hip places serving traditional dishes at non-traditional prices.
In which case it all boils down to whether the dishes are made well at these places.
At Indigo Deli K, the Bawi (Parsi woman), ordered charvelu eendu. This is a traditional Parsi winter breakfast dish that Jamshed Uncle has been urging me to eat for a while. Scrambled eggs spiced with salt, chillies and the winter special green garlic.
Here’s Jamshed Uncle’s response when we messaged him about ordering the dish.
“Charvelu eendu with fresh greens garlic costs is for two (4 eggs at Rs 7 each) in virgin pure cow’s ghee toast (18 slices Rs 20) Amul butter, home boiled cooled water, salt pepper, fuel gas costs us Rs 65. Oh please add 0.60 for paper napkin all served with smile and affection by A & M”.
Now my point, I repeat, is not about the prices (Rs385 plus taxes at Indigo Deli). The fact is that not everyone, will be invited home for breakfast by J like we are are, or even know of charvelu eendu like we do thanks to him. So you can’t compare the costs.
However, when you are paying a service charge you expect the wait staff to know if the dish is served with bread, which the person manning our table didn’t.
And you expect the dish to taste good.
The charvelu eendu at Indigo Deli was served in a modern plating style and looked attractive.
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Charvelu eendu. Too dry and tight |
K had a bite and said it was too dry. Parsi scrambled eggs/ charvelu eendu are meant to be creamy like western ones K confirmed and she said these were too tight and weren’t similar to what she had had while growing up in her house or in the house of her Parsi friends.
I tried a bit and here’s the non-Parsi perspective. The flavour of garlic came through but the texture of the eggs was pasty like that or airline scrambled eggs that we all loathe.
I had ordered the eggs baked with choriz or Goan sausage. I love Goan sausages and I thought that a Goan and Parsi dish would make for a good Mumbaiyya breakfast.
Our order took a long time to come to the table which made K say that a Parsi granny would have made the eendu (eggs) and fed us by the time the eggs arrived. I later realised that my order of baked eggs probably caused the delay. I appreciate that they got our order together at Indigo Deli. I hate it when it happens otherwise and one person’s food comes and the other person waits.
Except at 10 pc service charge, I would expect the wait staff to tell us of the time it would take.
My dish was an an epic fail too. The eggs to Goan choriz ratio in the dish was 1:7. There was a thin coating of eggs over a heavy Goan sausage curry making it a sausage and not an egg dish. You could not taste the eggs at all.
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Missing the egg in the eggs baked on Goan sausage |
And the choriz curry was too salty and didn’t have the fiery tanginess of a good Goan sausage. I was not going to waste my already over-drawn cholesterol quota on the dish and barely touched the dish. This was the first time I came across choriz in a curried format and it was the piquant sauce which overshadowed everything made it obvious why Goans usually don’t curry Goan sausages. If they do, I haven’t come across it.
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Left the most expensive dish unfinished. Couldn’t eat it |
You get a much better Goan, or east Indian actually, sausage and eggs dish at the tiny Villa Vandre in Bandra. Not for breakfast though. But then the chef there, Aloysious, is east Indian and understands the meat well.You can read about Villa Vandre here.
Our meal of two coffees and two eggs at Indigo Deli came to Rs 1,500 and was a complete waste of money because of the poor quality of the dishes. I don’t know if this is the first week of the new menu but it definitely needs some work on.
We usually come to Indigo Deli when we don’t get a place at Smokehouse or Saltwater (like today) and as we left I wryly told K, “no wonder it’s so easy to get a place here”.
Well, that’s being a bit harsh I confess. Their eggs Benedicts are consistently good at Indigo Deli and I would recommend them highly. As is the pesto spaghetti (no cream and not on the menu). Waffles are eggy and avoidable as is the cappuccino (avoidable not eggy). However, their house blend of coffee, which I had today, is very good.
The vibe of the place was pleasant today. The service polite. The toilets clean.
The problem is that we went to have a feel good breakfast but stopped smiling after the food arrived.
The problem is that we went to have a feel good breakfast but stopped smiling after the food arrived.
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Stick to the eggs benedict (with salmon here), house blend coffee and pesto spaghetti at Indigo Deli |
The eggs festival is on at all Indigo Delis I am told and is a weekend thing. The intentions are good and I seriously hope they up their act. Else go for the regular eggs Benedict.
One would expect a restaurant of this stature to perfect their dishes before unleashing them on clients. That charvelu eedu is a joke. Charvelu eedu is simply scrambled eggs with a Parsi flair – a little green garlic (when in season), fresh green chillies and coriander added to fluffy scrambled eggs. It's really sad that what they served you does not remotely resemble charvelu eedu.
Enjoyed Uncle J's comment!! I think it's important to have great tasting food that is not exorbitantly priced.I love the other dishes at Indigo Deli so I guess they can turn this around as well
One never knows today with the urge for restaurants to 'reinvent' dishes. None of the restaurant kejriwals, for eg, taste like the RBYC one which you and I love. But then the final product has to be good
I hope they do. Lot of factors go into a restaurant's pricing so it is hard to comment on that. The question then is whether one is willing to pay for what is charged. If one doesn't see the value, one won't. In this case we didn't