Zetu

Zetu’s to be found in an unobtrusive corner on the premises of one of the city’s brightest-hued art galleries, sharing candle-lit headquarters with 1AQ’s good old banyan tree. Yet, unlike so much of its surroundings in the historically wanderable Mehrauli, this restaurant isn’t something you spot by lucky chance at all. It’s Delhi’s first permanent spot for Sri Lankan food, and it was generating laborious strings of chatter long before it even opened in the neighbourhood… which just so happens to house some of the city’s fanciest eats. 

You’re led inside with coconut water in hand atop a golf cart, if you so choose. I found myself straightening my back. 

Sitting inside, amid cream-coloured and nicked-texture walls with a few stunning paintings (of course), strangely, I zoned out at ease. I walked around the outer dining area, where I’d recommend you take your seat, without feeling like I was inconveniencing fellow diners.

As it turns out, this was built into the architecture (by co-founder Anurag Dania), what with the palm trees, ample space between tables, and music a touch too faint. It’s vaguely tropical and the light from indoors ensures you can actually enjoy candle-powered squints at the menu – but make time to see their rotating mini-exhibition inside. Sarah Nikahetiya, a co-founder here and former British diplomat to India, nods vigorously when I ask her about this. ‘I’m from a small village in Britain, and we wanted to retain a sense of community and homeliness,’ she grins. The other co-founder is Abhishek Mathur, known for Gurgaon’s Covah and Congo.

I’m hesitant to ask about the choice of Sri Lankan cuisine (the appetite for food across the world is ceaseless in this city, after all), but Sarah anticipates it, and offers not a grand story, but that she's married to a Sri Lankan. 

While I’m waiting for dessert, I ambush Chef Romil Malhotra, a member of the three-pronged team led by Sri Lankan Chef Dush Ratnayake. By now, it’s already clear that Zetu hasn’t taken the predictable route of sticking to classic items from the country with a hint of Delhi heat. Chef Romil walked me through a deeper understanding of why.

The food, drinks, and ethos of Zetu

There is a sense of all-aboutery; some dishes here are inspired by stories in Sri Lanka, others lean into flavours from there, but still are somewhat reinvented dishes of the country, which is why it’s safe to say Zetu tries to be the place where you don’t worry about repeating ingredients in your choices.

Delhi may or may not be familiar with stereotypes around Sri Lankan food, but that hasn’t stopped Zetu from attempting to subvert them. One, while some ingredients are naturally common to Tamil and Malayali cuisine in India, Chef Romil says they’ve stuck to Sri Lankan-specific cooking techniques and textures. Secondly, there’s a tendency to associate the island country’s eating habits with seafood fare and cooking habits.

‘In the first menu cut, we barely had seafood. We wanted to break that myth. So we’ve worked more on vegetables, more on poultry, pulses, grains, rice… and we’ve played around that,’ says Chef Romil. 

Along these lines, the menu seems to do a good job of pointing out what’s distinctive about each dish.

The starters

The Tea and Treasure Rolls, for example, come in a panko-crumbed four: chicken, prawn, jackfruit, and egg, and how they taste far outdoes the difference in texture. The starter I’m most captivated by is the Port x City: even the potential pretentiousness of cranberry caviar and crisped cheese shaped like a Colombo port can’t overtake the flavours of mashed tuna (a bold choice in Delhi) and avocado (not so bold) in their mushy tartare. 

I’m staunchly against bite-sized snacks in a fine-dine set-up, but from the Snacks section, we picked the Pillow Fight, with similar constituents to the Port x City. It doesn’t land. (That bodes well for the restaurant’s flavour ethos, though, I suppose.) 

The mains

We tried the Kotthu – a Sri Lankan street food favourite also not a stranger to Malabar cuisine – godambu roti shredded up and dolloped well with a rich, creamy gravy, with carrots, spring onion and greens adding a slightly firmer mouth-feel. We get it with prawn, and it’s delicious. The vegetarian alternative is shiitake mushroom, which I’m almost tempted to say could be even better. Similar ingredients but a much more complex flavour is found in the chilli-oil kissed Held on Fire curry, which comes with flaked bread to munch on.

Crab dishes here are also done well (a rarity for Delhi, again), it’s elevated by the sauce that comes along. My only complaint so far is the portions. That’s resolved a bit with the beautiful Sri Lankan national dish, titled Yellow Rice and Three Curries: which are brinjal motu, potato, and cashew curries; topped zingingly with raw mango pickle, and some onion for a crunch.

I asked Chef Romil for his recommendations for those with North Indian taste-bud sensibilities, since we don’t have those. ‘Go on a roller-coaster. Start with choon paan (in-house breads) and our Garden after Monsoon (melon, cucumber, curd), Port x City or the Island Burrata… The sauce of the non-veg kiribath (coconut milk-infused rice, chicken) resembles North Indian and Mexican as much as Sri Lanka,’ he says. 

If you’re to order just one thing? The Air and Gold, he says without skipping a beat. Tenderly centred rice pancakes, with fillings detailed to the extent that I’ll just let you find out.

The dessert we decided to try, even though we've been heavily nudged towards the chocolate and biscuit, is the Guava, Baked. This is where I’ll use that sparing, cautiously preserved word: divine. Coconut and apple flakes on top of perfectly baked, sour guava that goes exceptionally well with the sweet tart. It’s the kind of dessert you can’t wolf; it’s intense. 

The drinks

Despite some seriously stunning, unmatched flavour profiles, cocktails aren’t the reason to come here. My companion and I downed some six or seven drinks between us – and neither the lightweight nor the heavyweight felt even slightly tipsy. 

My favourite, gone in mere minutes, was the Park St Pandan (tequila, pandan, matcha, pomelo oleo and watermelon that cut an earthy snack-feel off your tongue as soon as it hits, like a branded flavoured cracker). Runner-up: the Easterly Wind, where a gorgeous peanut butter tequila meets galangal chilli in a marriage with guava and mango as their sidepieces. Others we especially loved were The Zetu (nutty but not overwhelmingly savoury) and the Coconut Espresso Martini (which could actually pass for coffee unlike so many others in city bars). No serious misses in any of the others we tried, either.