I like the way my neighbourhood is turning into a busy food hub. When a new (and pretty ugly) shopping arcade came up right at the mouth of Mayur Vihar Phase 2 several years ago, I was a bit disappointed. It was full of banks and chemists those days. And while those venerable institutions still exist, it’s the sudden mushrooming with food stalls that has brought life to the area. Every day something new opens up.
This is the first market in Phase 2— facing you when you enter the neighbourhood from NH 24. The front row has a few eateries, but the back of the arcade is bursting with food stalls. A few years ago, there were a couple of restaurants there. One of them was — and is — called Malabar. I remember how excited I was when I first spotted it, thinking that good South Indian food had come closer. As it turned out, the restaurant was called Malabar for unknown reasons — because what it served was butter chicken and dal makhni. Then another restaurant opened up. A few, such as Nirulas and Subway, opened and shut. But little stalls and shops kept coming up — their flavours of food mingle happily with other spicy aromas in the area.
Variety on offer
Then, just a couple of days ago, I found that a new eatery had opened up in the front part of the market. I liked the simple name— Roll Club— and did a quick recce one evening to see what was on offer. There were all kinds of rolls — mutton, chicken, paneer and so on.
What caught my eye was the egg and potato roll. This sounds good, I said to myself, promising to return.
I went back there late last week and found that the place is not like any old roll counter that you find strewn across the city. Roll Club is a professionally run outfit, with branches in various parts of Delhi (including in Kalkaji, Mayur Vihar Phase 1, Kalu Sarai, near IIT and Jasola). They are open all seven days and do home delivery in the locality for orders of Rs.150 or more.
I asked for an egg aloo roll (Rs.35), an egg chicken keema roll (Rs.60) and a double egg mutton roll (Rs.80). The rolls were nicely packed in a carton and given to me. We ate them when I went back home, and found the rolls remarkably good.
They had not been stuffed with onions and cabbages, as some kathi rolls are. Instead, there was a healthy filling of the mutton tikka and the chicken keema along with onion rings and chutney.
The paratha was soft and not so oily that you needed medical help. In fact, the oil gets soaked in the paper that they wrap the rolls in, leaving you with a fairly low-oiled parantha. And, the egg aloo roll was simply delicious. The parathas also had a mild sweet taste that I enjoyed.
The helpings are large, the prices are reasonable, and the choice is huge— they have tikka rolls, keema rolls, seekh rolls, aloo rolls, paneer tikka rolls, paneer bhurji rolls, mixed veggie rolls and so on. They sell biryani too, but it was not available the day I was there.
All in all, the rolls at Roll Club are worth trying. Life looks up when you have had a nice paratha wrapped around egg and juicy mutton pieces, let me tell you.
