Greener pastures: Terrano Food trails

Gurgaon. Cold, grey, dusty Gurgaon. The buildings are grey, the sky is perpetually grey and life there in general seems grey. Sure, they have a lush green golf course and fancy malls to sedate you from reality. But you really need to be working your back side off if you want to keep yourself cocooned in that artificial environment. I hate such places. If given a choice, I’d avoid it like the plague. But this time I had no choice. We were hosting the 2016 OFF ROAD Awards, and having our OFF ROAD Expo in Gurgaon and the whole team was obligated to be present. Well, damn.
Something I was looking forward to, however, was the food. I pictured myself feasting on butter-soaked parathas and kebabs for every meal, but our schedule left us with almost no time to eat. We were surviving on sandwiches and rolls, food that we could eat on the go. No way was I coming here and not satiating my palate with what it wanted. So on the one day we had free between the Awards and the Expo, I grabbed Vikrant by the collar and headed out food-hunting on the pretext of doing a story.

We were back with our regular steed, the trusty Nissan Terrano, but this wasn’t like the Terrano that I’ve been using on all my other grub-hunting escapades. This wasn’t powered by their acclaimed 1.5-litre diesel engine, instead this was special — it had the 1.6-litre petrol burner under the hood. It’s almost like Nissan knew the sanctions that diesel engines would be facing in the days to come in the National Capital Region and were keen to tell us, hey, there’s also a petrol option. And I must say, it turns to out to be a rather nice engine.

The first thing you notice is how refined the motor is. It makes a 102.6bhp and 145Nm of torque which kicks in somewhere around 2000rpm and smoothly delivers it to the front wheels. It’s a most un-SUV like feeling, no diesel engine clatter, no vibrations, just the purr of a smooth petrol unit that had me constantly looking at the tacho to confirm that, indeed, the engine was ticking over. To give you an example, after picking up the SUV we were returning to our hotel and I pulled over to answer a call, Vikrant who has this fantastic ability to fall into deep slumber immediately after getting on the road, wakes up and tells me to switch off the headlamps lest the battery drain out. He couldn’t make out the engine was idling! The steering here is also hydraulically assisted, while the one with the diesel engine has electrically assisted hydraulic power steering —even better for keen drivers. Anyway, enough about the SUV. Let’s get to what we are really here for.

I had heard that NH1, the road connecting Delhi to Chandigarh, has legendary places to eat so we opted to skip the narrow streets of purani Dilli and headed straight for the highway. It took me nearly an hour and a half to get through Gurgaon and Delhi to finally hit NH1. From there on though, it was smooth sailing — the roads (and the sky) opened up. Murthal, approximately 40km from Delhi, is famous for its roadside dhabas. Now many of these dhaba owners work hand-in-glove with taxi drivers who ferry tourists up and down this road. Every time the taxi driver brings in a customer for a meal, he gets a free meal himself as an incentive. You’ll find certain dhabas teeming with tourists, but I didn’t want to visit one of these overcrowded, overpriced places (and claim my free meal, after all I did bring a sleeping Vikrant here to eat). What I wanted was a place which was a regular with the locals. Introducing Gulshan Dhaba. It has been around for over fifty years and is extremely popular with locals who regularly make the Delhi-Chandigarh commute. We arrived here just in time for a late lunch, and it wasn’t really hard to decide what I wanted to eat. Aloo parathas (pronounced pron-thas) and lassi, obviously. They were thick, overflowing with potato, dripping in white butter and just one was enough to leave you stuffed. The lassi was heavy and creamy (churned up in a washing machine, as you would have heard) and Vikrant and I had a hard time finishing the food that we ordered. The people here in Punjab and Haryana, they do not comprehend the concept of subtlety. The lifestyle, the food… everything, must be had king-sized. And I was loving it.

Back on the highway, we were cruising towards Chandigarh. The speed limit on NH1 is 90kmph, and quite surprisingly, everyone was sticking to it! Turns out, the highway has speed cameras littered across it and over-speeding will eventually get you stopped at one of the police check posts further down the road, where you’ll have to cough up a good ‘ol fine. It took a bit of concentration to not stray above the limit but eventually I got used to it. The Terrano felt superbly comfortable cruising at these speeds. Slot it into fifth, keep a light foot on the throttle and all you had to do was steer. While Nissan claimed a fuel economy of 13.2kmpl, we managed to extract a respectable 12.1kmpl.

By the time we had completed the 280km to Chandigarh, it was dark. We were welcomed to the city with a massive board informing us that the speed limit within the city was 60kmph. And something about radar surveillance and consequences was scrawled below that. Brilliant. We trundled through the city streets, passing crossroad after crossroad (the city is annoyingly orderly) until we reached Sector 10. In here lies this tiny gem of a shop run by Vijay Chaudhary. He’s been here selling milkshakes since 1965. Back then, his shakes cost one whole rupee! The coffee shake is supposed to be the biggest draw, but I can’t stand the taste of coffee. Yeah, sue me. I settled for a strawberry shake, complete with ice cream and froth and everything. Brainfreeze! It was December and the mercury had dipped way below what my seaside-accustomed body was used to. Gulping down ice cold milkshake wasn’t doing me any good. I must admit though, it tasted pretty darn good.

Our next stop for the evening was the Sector 8 market. Littered with little restaurants serving up everything from sandwiches to kebabs to pastries and even soup, this place has become a hub for people looking for a nice little evening snack. Many of these places serve you in the car itself, straight from the tandoor, which the locals call Car-o-Bar.

I needed a cup of soup to recover from my ordeal with the milkshake. Sweet corn chicken soup from Goldie’s Roost it was. I was talking to the waiter and he was telling me how Goldie’s is the oldest of such restaurants around. Whether the oldest restaurant in Chandigarh or the oldest in Sector 8, he couldn’t say, but I’ll take his word for it. Once the warm soup had flushed the chill out of my bones, I gathered up the courage to wander outside again. I stumbled upon Lava, this tiny hole in the wall from where the most mouth-watering fragrance of spiced meat in a tandoor was wafting. Paradise. The chicken malai tikka kebabs were absolutely sublime. I’ve heard people talk about melt-in-your-mouth kebabs and I always thought they were exaggerating, but one bite of these and I knew precisely what they meant. The flavour was so delicate and the meat so soft, they fell apart in your mouth. I relished every bite! Just thinking about them now makes my mouth water. Phew, what an evening it was turning out to be. And we hadn’t even started with dinner yet!

There are some restaurants which, over time, become nothing short of institutions. Pal Dhaba, where we were heading for dinner, is one such place. Founded in 1968 by Ashok Kumar Bhola, it claims to have some of the best Mughlai cuisine the city has to offer. I couldn’t wait to try it out. Even though they had seating indoors, we made ourselves comfortable in the chilly outdoors. I mean, it really won’t be a proper dhaba experience if I’m sitting in a plush, temperature controlled environment, would it? As I ordered my food, I made a silly rookie mistake. I ordered a butter chicken with butter naan. Luckily, the guy at the next table overheard me and quickly told me to correct it to a half plate. Were the portions that large, I asked. You’ll see, he smiled back.

You should’ve seen the look on my face when that half (if it can be called that) plate of butter chicken was brought to our table. It was huge, enough to fill up at least three hungry Punjabi men. And here I faced the daunting task of devouring it. By myself. I don’t even want to know what a full butter chicken would’ve looked like. And don’t even get me started about the butter naan. The guys in the kitchen must have smothered it with at least half a brick of butter before sending it to my table. But boy, does all that butter make it tasty! I’m too young to be worried about clogged arteries, right?

The next morning, we had to make an early start to get back to the Expo in Gurgaon. But after a dinner like that, there was no way I could drag myself out of bed till the sun was properly out. We headed to Sindhi Sweets in Sector 17 for brunch. When in Punjab (and Haryana), do as the Punjabis (and Haryanvis) do. Sindhi Sweets is a chain of restaurants scattered across Chandigarh that makes some of the most delicious looking Indian sweets. And their chole bhature is supposed to be divine. So like a true blue Punjabi, I was going to have some for brunch. My stomach was protesting after last night’s buttery escapade, but I was giving my taste buds priority here. It’s not everyday that you wake up in culinary heaven. The best part was that the chole bhature was the complete opposite of what I expected. I thought it would be dripping in oil, but it was so light that I ordered a second portion and devoured that too.

Driving back to Guragon was not fun. Don’t get me wrong, the Terrano was brilliant as always. Not once did it break into a sweat; be it in the narrow city streets or on the long, stretching highways – and this petrol motor turns out to be rather good too, complimenting the comfy ride and easy-going highway manners. What I was sad about was leaving behind the greens and blues of the countryside, the order and discipline of Chandigarh, only to head back to the gloom of Gurgaon. What I really wanted to do was drive through Punjab properly and explore places like Ludhiana, Patiala and Amritsar. Ah, time constraints. Well, at least I’d had a taste of what this part of the country has to offer. The rest of the guys have no idea what they missed out on!