BackLounge Review: Qla, New Delhi
This must be how the Greeks feel these days when they go out: Spent so much money and got nothing
Premium
The stunning complex of Seven Style Mile in Mehrauli, opposite the Qutub Minar, has seen many restaurants come and go. The new kid on the block is Qla (pronounced cue-la), a modern European restaurant comprising a dining space with a beautiful veranda, an event and music concert space (the old blueFrog) and a terrace for private events.
The good stuff
The restaurant is elegantly done in bronze, dark wood, burnished mirrors and leather and has a lovely honey-whisky hue, reminiscent of an old-fashioned dining room in a swanky club. The menu is large and varied, if slightly inscrutable: The appetizers, for instance, are called Flavors and each dish is described by its flavour profile, rather than a name. Social covers dishes that can be shared.
The rest of the menu, though, is broken up into Pizza, Pasta, Grill, Sliders, Mains, Sides, Dessert and Cheese.
The amuse-bouche was a beautifully plated quartet of a potato croquette, a mango and fresh fennel sampler, a watermelon and berry cube, and a shot of tender coconut water. An eggless focaccia roll and a brioche followed, soft, buttery and tasty. This was accompanied by whipped butter with togarashi powder (spicy Japanese seven spice) and a citrus ricotta.
We started with Hazelnut ( ₹ 365), a small glass of creamy, whisky-flavoured chicken liver pâté, which came with three little pieces of fried chicken. The port wine jelly cut into the rich fatty flavours of the pâté and brought relief to the palate: definitely one of the best things on the menu. This was followed by Wasabi ( ₹ 525), three tiny shrimps wrapped together and deep-fried in a tempura batter with a beautiful accompanying shrimp brûlée. More egg cake, less custard, it was a delightful, delicately flavoured appetizer.
The White Cooked, Organic Chicken Salad ( ₹ 395) was hearty yet light: Beautifully sliced organic chicken sat on diced, lightly herbed steamed potatoes with a pickled dill mayonnaise dressing. A little hard-boiled quail egg added one more protein element and art to the plate. The Lamb Slider ( ₹ 345) used deliciously flavoured confit lamb pulled off the bone and served up between soft bread buns; much better than mince.
We tried the Dunderi Ricotta ( ₹ 455), a made-on-site pasta with crisp ricotta cheese, served with a creamy cherry tomato and goat cheese balsamic sauce. The crispiness and creaminess offset each other well: comfort food.
The signature cocktails we tried—a Citrus Margarita ( ₹ 425), a Hibiscus Sour ( ₹ 425) and a Mexican Frozen Hot Chocolate ( ₹ 525)—were all well-made and perfectly balanced.
The not-so-good
The air conditioning barely works. Though it wasn’t a very hot day, we were sweating. The menu comes on iPads, which assumes a level of technological sophistication. But accessing one of the three menus (bar, food and wine) means closing the other two, which is tiresome. It didn’t help that the staff is poorly trained, inefficient and unschooled on the menu.
Portion sizes are tiny. The mains miss the mark, especially in view of the portions, which made the prices seem exorbitant.
We tried the Confit of Thai Duck ( ₹ 1,795), a tiny deep-fried duck leg, rather than a tender confit with a crisp skin. No hint of Thai anything here, least of all in the bed of bean cassoulet. The butter-poached Singaporean Black Cod ( ₹ 1,895) was tender but bland; the lemon-caper-butter sauce did little to make the dish shine. We had only one dessert and that was the Valencia Cheese Cake ( ₹ 395), an astonishingly chalky and average American-style baked cheesecake, despite the pretty bells and whistles: kabose jelly (jelly from tiny oranges), raspberry mousse, and blueberry compote.
No matter how tasty the bread, it is not appetizing to have a logo stamped on it, even if it is food-grade colour.
Qla is not cheap by any yardstick. My friend put it best: “This is how the Greeks feel these days when they go out—we spent so much money and we got nothing."
Talk plastic
A meal for four, which included four cocktails, four appetizers, a salad, three mains and one dessert, cost us ₹ 10,137.
The Kila, Seven Style Mile, Mehrauli, New Delhi. Noon-midnight (Tuesdays closed). For reservations, call 32318233.
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