The last time I dined at New Yorker, when it was near the noisy Gemini signal, I was in college stressing about projects, reporting stories and internships. A big group of us would go to the restaurant, order a plate of cheese-coated Manhattan fries and nachos, split a pizza, order more fries and end with the sizzling brownie for dessert, and that always made us forget about our impending deadlines. There’s something about nostalgia that’s always calming, although Woody Allen might disagree (“Nostalgia is denial, denial of the painful present,” — Midnight In Paris ), but nothing’s as comforting as the re-opening of one of your favourite restaurants, which also means that you now have greater expectations about the food and everything else associated with the place.
Now located at a new address on Wallace Garden, above Delhi Highway, my colleague and I had to wait almost an hour to get inside the restaurant; a far cry from what it was like five years ago. Once we were in, the floor was nothing short of chaos — kids and waiters were running around. Noisy families were waiting to occupy tables. It felt like we had walked into a wedding hall. After navigating through their extensive 10-page menu, we decided to start with the Swiss cheese fondue and the Half & Half: American cheese corn balls + Onion Rings. My colleague eagerly ordered the mains as well— a 6” Caprese pizza and Mexican Beans & Cheese Enchiladas but we made sure to tell our waiter to bring the starters first so that we could proceed to work on the mains quite leisurely. The fondue arrived first and with it the rich, fat smell of cheese along with a plate containing croutons, half a pita bread and some veggies, which took us a while to locate. While we were waiting for the (not Swiss but Amul) cheese to melt, the plate of onion rings and corn cheese balls arrived — the corn cheese balls were bursting with cheese and sweet corn kernels, and the onion rings were crisp with the very Indian flavour of chaat masala. It was only after we smelt something acrid that we realised the cheese pot was burning. Now, while the Swiss may consider a small circle of hardened, burnt cheese at the bottom of the pot as the final treat, even they’d be a little miffed if the entire portion tasted charred. Adding to that were the really hard and dry pieces of bread and the lack of vegetables, a surprise considering the restaurant is vegetarian. Within five minutes of the starters, our mains were brought to the small table we were seated at, thereby crowding even the inch of elbow space that we had to share with a menu pullout, our phones, glasses of water, plates of starters and the fondue pot.
By the time we moved to our main courses, the toppings in our pizza began to fall apart and the enchiladas had turned cold. The pizza is mystifying — at 6” it doesn’t satisfy anyone, but it was quite tasty. The enchiladas tasted like the roti and rajma gravy one is used to at dhabas, only at dhabas it doesn’t come with cheese.
If there’s one situation that dessert could redeem, it would be this. Fortunately the churros we ordered were passable — though the sauce tasted like it came out of a bottle, the greasy churros were astonishingly addictive. But they reminded us of South Indian ribbon pakodas.
The bottom line? Well, everyone else seemed to be really enjoying the food; maybe it just means that I have grown up — and a surfeit of cheese is now far less pleasurable than it used to be. The one thing New Yorker could take away from this? Perhaps add a prefix of ‘Indian’ to its categories.
New Yorker is at 21/10, 1st Floor, 3rd Street, Wallace Garden, Nungambakkam.
A meal for two is priced at Rs. 1000
