This is a story of my duel, a duel I lost to Punjab Grill by Jiggs Kalra, with homemade gur in my mouth and my hand in a jar of ghee.
Punjab Grill by Jiggs Kalra is written in royal gold that shone in the afternoon sun and the lion motif looked like he was prepared to battle. As soon as you're seated a smiling man places a tightly coiled strip of paper in a bowl before you and lightly announces, “Wet tissue ma'am.”
You stare at the tiny wedge wondering what happened to wet tissues, when he suddenly pours cold water into the bowl and you watch the tissue grow in size. A magic trick to distract you, while they scored their first point.
I contain myself and as trumpets sounded in my head, it signalled the start of the battle with a harmless cheese kurkuri that came in a shot glass. I brought my game face on, and wolfed down the crispy, vermicelli-coated roll filled with cheese and mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes with a sweet chilli sauce. The creamy cheese coupled with the sweet chilli sauce strikes a chord of perfect symphony.
The salmon tikka flavoured with dill and a touch of honey and fennel is perfectly cooked, allowing you to see the pink tone of the fish while you soak in the flavours that have been marinated into the meat.
Champ Taajdar or lamb chops marinated with Indian spices is a blow you don't see coming. The meat is literally melting off the rack; it slides off with a touch of your knife and implodes in your mouth, rocking every taste-bud to consciousness. They have scored their second point.
I brace myself for round two, with makhi di roti and garlic naan and pudina paratha accompanied with daal and sarson and paneer and chicken and…
You ask how harmless can daal be; I say eat it after it has been simmered overnight and finished with kasoori methi, butter and cream. The result is a bowl of sheer guerrilla mastery.
Meat Punjab grill, a preparation of lamb cooked with onion, cardamom and curd, is regal even just to look at. Almost feels like you need to earn the right to eat it. But it was the sarson da saag which was the Russian hitman of the coterie. It came silently, didn't talk too much and did its job – blew my mind. A combination of mustard leaves, spinach and bathua, finished with rice powder and tempered with garlic, it was the sarson da saag that scored their third point.
The guchchi pulao is a fragrant combination of jumbo morels (very expensive mushroom) stuffed with spiced milk cake. It is rich and I was left weakened, yet not defeated. Trumpets blew again signalling dessert, litchi ke tehri and chocolate jamuns. It was a combined attack. First the halves of litchi that you find in the creamy rice soufflé got me squarely in the jaw and then the jamun with chocolate hidden in the centre that finished me off in the solar plexus. Man down. I was defeated.
Punjab Grill by Jiggs Kalra is at SJR Primus, Ground Floor, 7th Block, Opposite Forum Mall, Koramangala. Call 40902161/ 40902162.
