I’d been
reading glowing reviews about Chez Nini for a while now, and was quite curious
about just how well one of New Delhi’s first non-Five Star experiments with
French food had turned out? So a bunch of us trooped in on a Saturday night eager
to have our taste buds tickled with some va-va-voom cooking. Blah blah boom
would be a more accurate summation of our dining experience, with dish after
dish upping the disappointment quotient.
The only
redeeming feature of this small (less than 10 tables), cosy restaurant in Meher
Chand Market, Lodhi Road was the ambience. The simple wooden tables were offset
by the bright red chairs and the interesting roof with an artificial tree
spreading out its branches twinkling with small fairy lights added a touch of
drama. However the ambience and the efficient if uninspired service was let
down by the dull as dishwater food and unimaginative wine list. The evening
started on a happy enough note with the complimentary bread (their take on
focaccia with a much stronger dollop of caramelized onions) which was très good
, even when eaten sans the usual accompaniments of olive oil and balsamic
vinegar. The drinks menu is quite limited (wine and beer only) and the
selection of wines consisted primarily of bland plonk which should not feature
on the menu of a restaurant with pretensions of being a fine dining
establishment. To give him, his due, our server was quite patient as we tasted and
rejected wine after wine (revolting bouquet, insipid taste) till we finally settled
for the only sparkling wine available (drinkable but just about).
The
appetizers included a ‘New Delhi’ French Onion Soup (house made
melba toast and grilled cheese) which any self-respecting Dilli ka
foodie would disown without a moment’s hesitation. It was unexciting and tasteless
without any of the depth of texture and flavour which, from the right kitchen,
makes French Onion Soup an amazing culinary experience. The crispy
soft poached egg (nugget potato salad, green and white asparagus) whose
merits a certain newspaper critic had waxed eloquently about, was okay but not
exceptional. The potato salad was nothing more than lashings of mayo and dill
mixed in potatoes and the white asparagus was conspicuous by its absence!
However the green asparagus was done just right and sadly this simple accompaniment
was the star of an otherwise unexceptional dish! Nini’s Poutine was
equally disappointing, with French fries covered over with a bland, brown
sewage consistency, caramelized onion gravy with small dollops of what the menu
stated and the server insisted was homemade cheese curd. However one bite was
enough to convince us that it was nothing more than good old paneer! This dish
was exceptionally disappointing since the chef-owner Nira Singh was born and
raised in Montreal, the capital of Quebec (French speaking Canada) where
poutine originated.
The main of Vegetarian
chilli and house made cheese curd (roasted pine nuts, toasted bread cream and
rye melba toast) was nothing more than ‘rajma’(minus our delicious
masalas) cooked with minced soya nuggets, with the occasional piece of carrot
or zucchini and the pine nuts completely absent. The accompanying toasted bread
cream looked like baby puke and had all the taste and flavour of a dish of
liquid concrete. (For more about how even fast food chili can taster sooo good read the previous review of Chili's) One thing you can say about this establishment is that they are 'equal opportunity horrific food creators! My non-vegetarian dining companions were as luckless as me in this evening of culinary misadventures! The only saving grace of this lack lustre dinner was the
dessert of lemon meringue which had a lovely sharp tangy taste and the pistachio
churros (dark chocolate, coffee and vanilla ganache) which were pleasant but
not great and which again left me wondering what was yet another Mexican dish
doing on the menu of a French restaurant?!
Overall a visit to Chez Nini is to be avoided, the food is insipid, the prices are steep and the experience on the whole is profoundly unsatisfactory.
Overall a visit to Chez Nini is to be avoided, the food is insipid, the prices are steep and the experience on the whole is profoundly unsatisfactory.
Ambience: 3/5
Food: 2/5
Service 3/5
Value for
Money: 1/5
Cost of Meal
for Two (With Alcohol): Rs. 4000-4500
