Restaurant review: It's 9

Almost adjacent to Nehru Park, behind a Bikanerwalla in the famous Yashwant Place Complex in Chanakyapuri, lies the elusive It's 9 cafe. I have seen it on multiple occasions and decided to check this place out. While I have not uncovered the reasons why the cafe is named so, I was at first pleasantly surprised to find a cafe with a somewhat varied range of options on the menu in this area.

It's 9 is a nondescript cafe that spans an entire floor. The decor is light and fresh, with peppy art pieces on the walls, the music is a reminder of the pop culture from the 90's (Vengaboys, Britney Spears and so on). On to the food...

I had company who decided to start off by trying their lemon coriander soup while I, dying from the Delhi heat, decided to go for their red berry smoothie. The soup was accompanied by a bowl of croutons, and my friend was satisfied with it. It wasn't the best lemon-coriander soup he'd had, but it was not bad either. It had quite generous chunks of veggies. Plus the croutons made him happy.

I wasn't as lucky. My smoothie tasted vaguely like cough syrup and the consistency was very watery. Very.

We both got on to better luck with the food. My friend ordered the It's 9 special burger. It came in a 9-shaped bun, with the side of potato wedges and coleslaw. Again, not the best burger, but doable. The burger patty was by no means out of this world; it was average. The wedges were hot and crisp.

I ordered a stir fry veg wrap. The portion of the wrap pleased me as did the filling inside. It was accompanied with french fries that were okay and for some reason, also slivers of raw cabbage.

On the whole, I would not advise anyone to make a special trip to It's 9. It is average at best. However, I have heard good things about their pastries. The place also sells a variety of breads and savory bakery items. So visit this cafe only if you are in the 'hood!

Mexican Birthday Fiesta!

Yesterday was the birthday of one of my closest friend of 10+ years, Avinesh Wadhwa, who is also the pastry chef & co-owner of Cravebusters. About an year and a half ago, Avinesh came back from Canada, and along with his brother, opened up Cravebusters, a home-delivery joint  that delivers a wide variety of lip smacking goodies all over Delhi. Since then, life has been one joyous food trail.

Avinesh decided to cook for us this birthday. We didn't complain because he is amazing with food! My friend likes to work around themes and maybe because he lives far away and in order to lure us in and battle the Delhi traffic to make it to his place, he whatsapped us the menu he was going to prepare for his Mexican Birthday Fiesta lunch. And a fiesta menu it was...

The expansive menu sent to us to lure us in.

We were greeted by a lovely Virgin Sangria. There was an option between that Virgin Mimosa, and somehow I never did see the Mimosa...

The virgin sangria that tasted surprisingly nice.

Honestly not expecting much from a virgin Sangria, I took a half-hearted sip to be pleasantly surprised by the beautiful flavors in the drink. It tasted fresh and citricus-sy and vaguely reminded me of home-made iced tea.

Appetizers had a variety of dips, corn salad in pretty little edible cups and nachos. The corn and bean salad was to be filled in the edible cups, also made by Avinesh, and any of the dips to be used as dressing. Yummy! I am not a great salad eater but I had like three helpings! The nachos were the only thing Avinesh didn't make but the wide assortment of dips more than made up for it. There were three kinds of salsa--tomato salsa, mango salsa and green salsa. The tomato salsa was nice, clean and fresh. I'm not a big fan of mango as a fruit, but I tasted the salsa anyways...and it tasted like mango, which mango-eaters loved. My favorite of the entire dips collection was the green salsa. It was Avinesh's take on the classic green salsa and was nice and hot and spicy thanks to the liberal use of jalapenos, heaven for my Indian palate. I miss that dip.

Left to right: Guacamole that barely made it into the frame, cheese dip, tomato salsa, edible cups, green salsa, corn salad and nachos.

Avinesh made many more dips and I loved them all! He made absolutely delicious guacamole, the best I've had in the longest time. Then there was the sinfully cheese dip, which I can only describe as heaven. So much cheese, so much happiness! I also fell in love with the amazing sour cream dip. I cannot believe he actually made all of this!

Onto the main course... we were full. We were stuffed. But we managed to eat the fajitas. My friend made a chicken version and a vegetable version for the filling which he served as sizzlers. We all took a wrap each and used the fillings and the many dips to make our own fajitas.

Chicken and vegetable fajita fillings.

The complete fajita.

My friend baked his own birthday cake! Apparently he doesn't trust anyone else to do it right. To keep the Mexican theme, he baked the Tres Leches cake with dulce de leche.This is a traditional Mexican three milk cake. The three milks used in the cake are the normal milk, evaporated milk and condensed milk. I have no idea what evaporated milk is supposed to be, but Avinesh says he made that from scratch for this cake. The topped the cake with yumm whipped cream and caramel. I was skeptical about eating this cake; it is supposed to be dense (and not fluffy) and I'm not the biggest fan of milk. I'm so happy that I ate it. Tres lechees has now become one of my favorite desserts! It tastes a bit like milk cake, is the right amount of sweet, and is incredibly soft.

Tres Leches cake with dulce de leche. Avinesh made this caption himself.

Avinesh Wadhwa is a magician when it comes to making desserts. I'm a HUGE fan of his cheesecakes. As if that delicious cake wasn't enough, he loaded us all up on sugar. There was another cake which he called Fried Cinnamon Ice Cream Cake.

'Fried' Cinnamon Ice Cream Cake

It is not exactly fried ice cream, at least not the kinds I've had before. The ice cream itself it gorgeous cinnamon ice cream sandwiched between fried crunchy cornflakes. The ice cream had a beautiful cinnamon flavor but was a little too sweet for my taste.

Speaking of ice creams...Avinesh made three flavors of them FROM SCRATCH! There was peanut butter ice cream, coffee ice cream and red velvet cheesecake ice cream. I didn't have much room in my stomach so I couldn't even try the peanut butter one, but I had the other two. Red velvet cheesecake ice cream had chunks of red velvet cake in it. I really hope he introduces this flavor in the Cravebusters menu because I want more... MORE! It was so delicious, I cannot tell you. What stole my heart though was the coffee ice cream. It had a generous dose of coffee it's bitterness was perfectly balanced with the delicate sweetness.

Left to right: Peanut butter ice cream, Red velvet cheesecake ice cream, and Coffee ice cream

 Our dessert journey ended with gorgeous churros, out of oil. I am a big lover of churros and I loved Avi's creation. He rolled them out of cinnamon sugar and gave us a dip of chocolate sauce to have with them. The chocolate sauce also he made from scratch and it had beautiful consistency and a hint of coffee.

Churros and chocolate dip

I've come to the conclusion that I love Avinesh's birthday almost as much as I love mine. Avinesh, you are one great cook and one of the nicest people I know. And you give me sugar, so extra points for that.

Chef Avinesh Wadhwa in his element!

People, I highly recommend Cravebusters for your midnight cravings. You can find the entire menu and details on zomato.

The 1st Post

My name is Soumya, I am a writer, and I love to eat.

I have written about a variety of topics that I love including films, Korean dramas, books etc etc. As an ex-travel writer, I was told to write about the many aspects of a destination such as the landscape, the monuments, the arts and crafts of the place and so on. But I have always been interested by the food each place has to offer. Each and every place.

In my new blog, I shall try to chronicle my food trail (most of it within Delhi) for the next six months. I set a goal of six months because it doesn't seem too long, and thus, achievable.

So that's that then.