It takes a brave heart to traverse the lanes of Kamla Nagar in Delhi University in this heat, but if you’re a hungry, home-food-deprived student, that’s a minor hitch. Awaiting the swarming lot of new students on July 16, when the summer session begins, are four spanking new food joints that whip up fancy culinary treats without emptying your wallet.

The Chinjabi lane in “K-Nags” (for the uninitiated, slang for Kamla Nagar) has been an institution for the past decade. Every year a new population of restaurants comes up here, but only those with a pulse on the food pipe of the slightly impoverished yet ravenous DU student can survive. Mandeep Singh and Akhil Malik surveyed all the restaurants in the DU area and decided to open QD’s (short for Quick Dining), a multi-cuisine restaurant in the famed Chinjabi lane. But to be successful, they knew they had to innovate. Voila! And that’s where the highly original Tandoori Momo stems from. “There is a significant population of students from the Northeast who wants its momos and there’s the North Indian crowd who wants their food spicy. So we came up with the Tandoori Momo,” says Singh. The tandoori momos are available in vegetarian (Rs 60) and non-vegetarian (Rs 70) versions. Although the momos taste a tad too much like tandoori chicken or tandoori paneer, this variation on the steamed momo has become the most popular item on the menu. QD’s serves Chinese and Tibetan cuisine, North Indian thalis and Hyderabadi and Kathi rolls. “We’re also the only place here to serve mocktails, Akhil has some bartending experience from his years in Dubai and we wanted to incorporate it, without the alcohol, of course,” smiles Singh. Sip on the moderately priced (each mocktail is Rs 25-40) Blue Lagoon, Shirley Temple, Watermelon Spritzers and Mojitos and if you’re gutsy enough, ask for the Woo Woo mocktail, a combination of 10 exotic flavours topped up with soda.

... contd.