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Garage, Inc (Hauz Khas Village) / The Blue Door (Khan Market) reviews

My friend Karmanya and I have been searching for a good burger in Delhi the past week. With that in mind, I went to two places to see how the burgers were.

***

Garage Inc

Garage, Inc in Hauz Khas Village bills itself as an American diner. Naturally, the bare minimum expectation of an American diner is it should serve good burgers. A flight of stairs through the cacophony of construction that seem to be perpetually going on HKV leads to this restaurant. (Karmanya thought he was about to shanked because of how shady the construction site looked.)

A heavy iron door – the kind you’d expect for a bank vault, but not really – opens into the restaurant which seems to be aiming for the biker look on everything except for its menu. To be honest, nothing stands out in the decor except for a seemingly-unused foosball table right in front of the door.

For starters we ordered cheesy fries with pork, which had some description of shredded meat similar to beef chilli (but supposedly pork). Oh well. I had better hope from their burgers, so I ordered a chicken grease burger with bacon while Karmanya ordered a bacon and beef burger. Now, the concept of “rare” or “medium rare” seems to be non-existent in India, despite specifically making a request for a medium rare burger, the patty in the one Karmanya got was charred. Mine was slightly better, but that’s not saying much since the buns seemed to be too cheap / badly stored and fell apart within seconds. The coleslaw, too, was stale (and upset my stomach later in the day).

I was looking forward to dessert since I’d looked up on Zomato that they did deep-fried Mars bar, a Scottish abomination that I haven’t eaten for a while. It’s a standard Mars bar, deep-fried in batter to create a Frankensteinian calorie monster that makes you regret eating it the moment you do. BUT IT IS SO WORTH IT.

Garage Inc - Deep fried Mars bar

Now, the thing about a deep-fried Mars bar is that isn’t supposed to be a fine dining experience – because that’s not what the deep-fried Southern American cuisine style is about. It’s supposed to greasy, dirty, sweet, and loaded on calories. Yet the dessert that was presented was dainty, with chocolate sauce dressing, a scoop of ice cream, and to make it worse a “fun” size Mars bar rather than a normal one.

The ambience and food at Garage, Inc is terrible. Give this place a miss.

Rating: 3 / 10

***

Blue Door Cafe Khan Market signI’ve walked passed the sign for The Blue Door Cafe in Khan Market many times, always giving it a miss because the sign looks. so. shit. The sign is tacky as fuck, more along the line of an upscale dhaba that attempts to do European cuisine. Still, on Karmanya’s recommendation – and since my choice of Garage, Inc had been so crap – we decided to give this place a go.

We went in for lunch, although they seem to specialise in breakfasts and crepes. I ordered a burger again with a brownie shake – the latter of which they promptly forgot until I prompted them for it an hour later. Apart from that hitch, the service was on the ball.

Speaking of the burger itself, it was done medium rare-ish without even asking for it, showing that the place cares about its meat. The salad was fresh, the chips were chunky, and buns too tasted fresh without falling apart. The shake, well, shakes are good in their own right but given enough whipped cream anything tastes good, to the point that anyone who claims a milkshake they had was “heavenly” now just gets a shrug from me.

I need to go back to this place another day to try their breakfast, because properly-cooked bacon is hard to get in Delhi. The Blue Door Cafe is an excellent place for the price you pay.

Rating: 7.5 / 10

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