[Eat It]: Pakistani BBQ

Hongqiao's other Indian gem - By Christopher St Cavish, Aug 20, 09

UPDATE: As of January 2010, Delhi Zaika is closed. RIP.

Delhi Zaika's new menu kicks off with a thud:

"Keeping in mind the present world situation we have also greatly reduced our prices on most items.

While still assuring you of premium meats and vegetables being served at your table.

Enjoy your meal."

At the bottom of the cover page bearing the above inscription is a disclaimer that, in part, reads:

"Please hand your complaint to the manager."

Is it a sly but naive set-up, insinuating underachievement only to exceed your expectations -- if you don't flee first? How many complaints were delivered elsewhere before the management decided a cover page announcement was necessary to keep the complaints flowing in a smooth and orderly manner?

I've only got one complaint for the manager: Delhi Zaika's location.

Importing and exporting carpets, for example, might not demand anything more illustrious than an anonymous Hongqiao address. (In fact, it's the owner's primary business, the carpet.) But trying to fill sixty or seventy seats in an independent Indian restaurant does. Delhi Zaika's location, next to the carpet-shop, is killing them. At best, they're a 20rmb cab ride from downtown. (They're considering starting afresh in.... Pudong.)

It'd be a real loss if Delhi Zaika folded. They are Bukhara or Vedas -- Shanghai's benchmarks for Indian cooking -- minus the royal decor, at Indian Kitchen prices.

Delhi Zaika does north Indian standards and Pakistani BBQ. (I don't know how it's different either. The owner explained it once, but I was only pretending to listen. Anyway, it's irrelevant. Good cooking is good cooking, from Shandong to Sri Lanka to Saratoga, and Delhi Zaika is good cooking.) There's a real nice dal makhni coming from the kitchen. This little guy right here, a soupy dish of chewy black lentils in a tomato-based curry.

And this baingan bhartha, a Pakistani version of what's usually a stewed eggplant dish. Delhi Zaika's iteration is a mild, cold dish of roasted eggplant, chopped, and mixed with yogurt and garlic, almost like a raita. It's killer.

The draw though -- and given that Delhi Zaika's lower prices offset the cab fare, you should let it draw you -- is their BBQ. There's a decent mutton sheesh, chopped and formed around the long skewer; a mutton namkeen boti whose menu description -- "marinated in salt and herbs" -- varies a bit from its fiery reality, but is delicious nonetheless; a gentler chicken malai boti, marinated in fresh cream and "mild spice"; an Afghani chicken tikka, whose marinade of fresh cream and dried fruits tasted more like chili and lemon; and hara masala boti, a green-ish boneless chicken kebab marinated in coriander and mint. Description / reality discrepancy aside, they're all quite good. Here they are below, an edible metaphor of multi-culturalism, unity, and value. That sizzling serving plate is the 145rmb special that nets five kinds of BBQ / tikka / boti / kebab / whatever. (Naan and chappathi are also deals here -- a basket of four kinds, full servings, and delicious, for 50rmb.)

There's maybe one more drawback to Delhi Zaika. The atmosphere really eats it. It's not that it's not a nice restaurant -- the chairs are solid wood, the serving dishes are bronze and heavy -- but that there's no one in it. Last Tuesday, I was the only table there. Without people chattering and waiters buzzing, you start noticing things like where the tops of chairs have chipped off the paint on the walls. Weekends, apparently, are better, but there seems to be a depressing air that settled over the place after the '08 Hongqiao foreigner exodus eviscerated their customer base.

Understandable. Delhi Zaika deserves better, though. The kitchen could have given up long ago; no one would have noticed. They didn't. They're still plugging along out there, a lonely Pakistani chef and his blast furnace of a tandoor, waiting for some customers. Give 'em a try.