My friends still pull my leg about something that happened years ago. We had been invited to lunch by a friend, who had prepared some great pasta and salad. “This is what we should always do,” I declared happily, as I dug into the food — just have one dish or two when we call people over. I wasn’t being funny or rude, but everyone thought I was. I was actually being honest: If there is too much on a table, I don’t really enjoy my meal. I am, I say with some pride, essentially a two-dish person.
Well, you can make that three dishes now. I went to a new restaurant that serves just three dishes — and came back home greatly sated. Teen Pateela is in Meharchand Market (Shop no. 96, 011-24655896, 9599436801). Until recently, it was a home delivery and takeaway outlet. Now you can sit there and have your three dishes — Punjabi Aloo (₹ 225), Dal Ferozepuri (₹325) and paneer (₹325).
Teen Pateela is right up my street. I have for long bemoaned the fact that you don’t get good Punjabi food in Delhi restaurants. What is passed off as Punjabi cuisine isn’t really so — everything is cooked in a mix of onions and tomatoes.
But Teen Pateela gives you the taste of home cooked Punjabi fare.
The owner, Shekhar Malhotra, is from Ferozepur in Punjab, and holds that the recipes come from his own home. Each dish is cooked with just four basic spices — coriander, cumin, turmeric and red chillies. The food is cooked right there in the restaurant, and is served with crispy paraunthis — as Punjabis call them — and vegetables pickled in vinegar.
Tomato Paneer
I like the owner’s passion for food. A vegetarian, he believes that food should not be overwhelmed with masalas. He sources his ingredients with care, too. The potato, for instance, is cooked with farm fresh tomatoes and onions that come all the way from Pauri Garhwal. Apparently, the onions are so sweet and juicy that they can just be bitten into and eaten raw. The paneer — deliciously soft — comes from Gopala, and they use nicely aromatic desi ghee in the dishes. I loved the parathas, and enjoyed my meal — and the conversation with Shekhar — enormously.
The spices in the aloo were well balanced: neither too much, nor too little. The ingredients were fresh, and cooked with a light hand. The paneer was cooked with tomatoes the day I was there, but is prepared differently on different days. The dal was simply divine. It had been cooked overnight, and then served after a day so that it captured every flavour. The surprise fourth pateela in Teen Pateela was the halwa (₹ 99). I enjoyed it, but would have liked it even more if the atta had been roasted some more.
There are combo meals — dal with Punjabi aloo and two lachcha parathas or dal with paneer and parathas (₹295). You can get just the lachcha paratha at ₹65 and paneer or aloo rolls at ₹175. Teen Pateela now also sells vegetables and turmeric pickled in vinegar.
If you like your meals simple — yet flavourful — stop by at Teen Pateela.
The writer is a seasoned food critic
