Mixing it up

Food tastings are a strange beast, particularly when beasts aren’t your preferred choice of cuisine. Having been invited to two last week, I went in the spirit of never refusing a free lunch, but as O’Henry once put it, ‘The gifts of charity are encumbered. If not in coin you must pay in humiliation of spirit for every benefit received at the hands of philanthropy’; or in this case ‘The gifts of food tastings are encumbered, if not in coin you must pay in sacrifice of neutrality for every benefit received at the hands of a PR agent’.  For most starving culture/entertainment journalists, that translates into a write-up so hyperbolic it is an insurance of many more free meals to come. But, unfortunately, my pride being greater than my hunger-pangs, I hope to remain unbiased.

The first of these tastings was at the newly opened food court at Supercinema Vogue Towers on MM Alam Road. It will eventually have four different restaurants once the place becomes fully functional, but for now patrons can make do with just two: ‘Patiala Pyala’ and ‘Deli Fresh’. Patiala Pyala is a restaurant in the vein of ‘Chatkhara’, offering a variety of desi favourites like Dahi Bhallay, Aaloo Chaat and Gol Gappay.

The Gol Gappas, as expected, were a disappointment, but then I have a very specific taste in those and nothing short of the ones outside Lawrence Garden and Liberty will do for my tastebuds. It’s usually the ‘paani’ that is the problem, and that is where these faltered too. Next came the dahi bhallas. Made in fresh yogurt (a bit of an achievement in this heat), these were a hit; the bhallas soft but not so much as to disintegrate into the rest of the dish, and the taste good enough for one to overlook the slight overdose of meethi chatni. This dish was as good any dahi bhalla you can have at half the price in Liberty. And therein lies the catch. Other than an air conditioned environment and a convenient location for cinema goers, Patiala Pyala will have to offer a bit more to build a customer base that will keep going back solely for the food.

The dishes from Deli Fresh included the best onion rings I have had in the city thus far, crisp and perfectly fried. My friend, generally finicky about restaurant food for fear of stomach bugs, finished the ‘Zinger burger’ quickly and gave it a thumbs up. Apparently all the plagiarized versions of the Zinger are doing much better these days than the original KFC ones. The Mint Margherita, however, wasn’t quite as frozen as it ought to have been, its slushy texture a disappointemnt in the 47C heat.

[quote]The Supercinema food court can be a decent go-to if you want to make a complete night out of it with movie and dinner under the same roof[/quote]

The Supercinema food court can be a decent go-to if you want to make a complete night out of it with movie and dinner under the same roof, but as a sole culinary destinaton I would wait for the other two restaurants to open up before I pass full judgment. Besides the food, what it has going for it currently are the comfortable sofas and dividing screens (handy for young couples) and the pleasant, if not spectacular, view from its fourth-floor balcony (best enjoyed when winter rolls round).

The next tasting was also a red carpet event, attended by Hamza Shahbaz Sharif and cricketer Mohammed Hafeez, among others. This was at Palillos Courtyard, a new restaurant on MM Alam Road whose particular cuisine specialty I have been guessing at ever since it opened business. At the launch event the food served was a mix of continental and Chinese but the chopsticks in the Palillos logo suggest a more Oriental leaning.

Despite the oppressive heat that day, mist fans helped convert the courtyard into a pleasant space for an outdoor meal. For those more inclined toward the luxuries of indoor cooling and a fine-dining restaurant ambience, there is also a tastefully done indoor area. The invitation read 8:30 but in true Lahori style, dinner was served exactly two hours late, once the ‘VIP’ guest sauntered in. This, however, did not take away from the excellent food that was eventually served. There were also lovely bite-sized appetizers passed around generously to tide over guests who had arrived on time along with an option between two drinks, a ‘Double Mint Margherita’ and ‘Courtyard Fever’, a drink made out of orange, peach and lemon juice. Neither of them disappointed, providing just the right amount of frozen texture and taste.

Amongst the appetizers I highly recommend the Canapes with Jalapeno cheeseballs that I couldn’t get enough of. The main buffet’s Tamarind Fish and Alfredo Pasta were as good as any I have had. The overall sense I took away from the launch was that Palillos would be a good option to pick next time I am cruising up and down MM Alam Road trying to decide upon just the right place for that evening’s special meal.