Sam's Cafe

Sams Café is located at Pahar ganj, The very place where bourgeoisie intellectuals go shopping and students go for the cheap hard drinks starting at Rs 20/-. A little further away from German bakery (will write about it some other day) you see an orange board with a hot cup of coffee and the name Sams café. As you get in, there is a small bakery, go more through the narrow passage and you reach a spacious inside. I opted to go the roof top way.  If you want to burn the calories you gain from the rich food you are gonna eat take the stairs or the lift is an experience in itself as you don’t find such old model lifts everywhere in this high tech world.

After taking a comfortable seat of your choice comes the menu. Although the place is meant mainly to sell to foreigners I noticed that all the costly items in the menu are tried by Indians while the foreigners usually go for simple items. However we Indians go out to eat something different from what you eat at home, thus it is explained. The simpler things can be cooked at home, why pay for it. This funda is very much evident when you see a south Indian restaurant full of north Indians. Meanwhile we forgot to go through the menu. As I m not officially hired by someone to write such views and neither popular like Rahul Verma or Vir Sanghvi I have to pay for whatever I eat from my own pocket, so I have not tried most of the stuff in the menu and can’t describe them. But from the couple of times I have been there I can tell you that there is something special in their way of cooking and a very informal way of serving. The menu gives you details about the major ingredients in the fancy names mentioned making it simple for less experienced people like me to choose as per mood. I only flipped through the Indian food pages, the reason as mentioned above. I don’t believe that they can give me anything better in Indian cuisine than what I have had before. So I stopped only at the Italian and Israeli special pages. Good Italian is something I always crave for but can’t have as it always comes with the cost. Chill’m n Slice of Italy are a few good recommendation. But then nothing can be better than the Diva chain when it comes to Italian. (As I said it’s not easy on your pocket, need at least 2 grants in hand.) So today when I visited I chose to have Lasagne(Rs 190/-) a must recommendation from all my food loving friends who are regular visitors here and Sam’s special pizza…. My first choice was a calzone but as bacon was out of stock the waiter told me to go for the Pizza instead (Rs 200/-).

Now if you have placed the order please wait and wait and wait till the order comes. Like most great food places this place also takes its own sweet time to prepare the food. Meanwhile just look around to see the casual way of arrangement and interior decoration. A peaceful open air location to savour your food. Drinks, smoke and hookah too available and is known for that too but then it is not my cup of tea ask someone else about it. Very clearly you are not one of their priced customer and don’t expect any such behavior from the staff. This is what I meant when I said informal.

Hmm, back to the food. The only Lasagne I had had before was from 975. I thought that was a good dish but only till I had this one. It was simply superb. The pizza was also nice but I felt my first choice of calzone if available had been a better choice. Anyway, the pizza was topped with olives. Yes the green ones you get in bottles (forgot the brand) -the very same one was used to top it. You can feel that unique flavor with every bite. Cheese tomato sauce and meat makes up the flavor. Well I believe I can explain something I see but not something I tasted. Sweet, salty bitter etc are too simple words to do that. Sugar can be easily described as sweet, but when it comes to gulab jamun and rasgulla? What could be said about their taste? Sweeter and sweetest? Ohhh! Why am I complicating things. Forget it! What I just tried to tell you is you need to try it yourself. Not just the ones I mentioned but the other stuff too. And if you have time tell me about them as I would like to know and try them out.