Detailed review by koshkha
koshkha
Northampton, United Kingdom98%
The Host Restaurant is one of many restaurants on New Delhi's Connaught Place and it can be very difficult to tell them apart. The circular lay-out of Connaught's double donut-ring design is designed to confuse the unwary and lots of the restaurants look pretty similar from outside (and indeed from inside since the layouts are very similar). It's also very difficult to see inside when you are standing at the window peering in. The Host is one I've accidentally stumbled into several times and I've always ended up kicking myself for my mistake.
The Host is in F-block of the inner ring of Connaught Place which is several blocks from my favourite Delhi restaurant which is called Zen. Connaught is the heart of New Delhi - the place from which the rest of Lutyen's 'designed' city of New Delhi radiates out. It's the location of lots of swanky (by Delhi standards) shops, fancy restaurants and grand buildings and it's also a key hub on Delhi's Metro system. Sooner or later all visitors to Delhi find themselves at Connaught Place.
Since we were dizzy from walking round and round, looking in shops, evading touts and street sellers, and still a bit dazed from our overnight flight, my husband and I found ourselves on a Saturday evening in October strolling into The Host and remembering just too late that this was the one we didn't like and hadn't enjoyed the year before. Once we were through the large brass door and past the doorman, our typical English reserve made it hard to turn tail and run away.
We were pounced on by the Maitre d' and whisked to a table just inside the door with a reserved sign. Clearly we'd passed the test of being 'the sort of people' they wanted just inside the door to encourage others in - in this case, I think being Europeans was enough to qualify. We sat down my husband on a chair, myself on a banquette against the wall - and were instantly irritated by the grubby waiters pouncing to take drink orders. They brought us the menus - one Indian, one Chinese and a big drinks list and set about laying the table around us. Looking around the room it was almost identical to other restaurants on Connaught with a lower floor for non-smokers and a mezzanine for smokers. The ceilings are high and the walls are decorated with very tall arched windows. The seating has a worn and grubby look of too many years of ingrained spillages and lack of cleaning. The tables are widely spaced which probably indicates that they don't get filled all that often. I suspect The Host relies on a throughput of lots of tourists who are passing through rather than local repeat business.
We ordered a beer and several dishes from the Chinese menu. Despite knowing that we'd already ordered food, the Maitre d' was back asking if we wanted snacks with our beer. I pointed out we'd just ordered a full meal but he still wanted us to order more. Was this a sign that there would be a long wait or just desperation to sell more? We weren't sure but no sooner was the waiter back with our drinks than he was starting on the 'do you want any snacks?' routine.
To start we'd ordered Tom Yum Soup - prawn for me and chicken for my husband. Anyone who's read other restaurant reviews of mine will know I ALWAYS order Tom Yum soup. When it arrived it was absolutely dreadful - more Tom Yuk than Tom Yum. I hated it. It was the wrong colour, had the wrong spices, had no leaves and sticks and bits floating in it (part of the delight of a good TYS is spending half your time taking the bits out), had no heat to it and had a texture like dirty washing up water. I was intensely disappointed.
For our main courses, we'd ordered vegetable Manchurian (little vegetable dumplings), roasted bean curd in garlic sauce and a fish sweet and sour. The sweet and sour was ok with a good level of spice, lots of crisp vegetables and not too much stickiness in the sauce but the absence of the key ingredient i.e. the FISH - was unforgivable. Oddly enough, the same waiters who'd hovered around desperate for our order, melted into invisibility when we wanted to challenge the lack of fish in the fish dish so we shut up and ate whilst wondering if there might be some fish under the next piece of pepper but fining not one molecule of fish in the entire dish. The Manchurian balls were sticky and heavy and rather cloying. Annoyingly the sauce on the veg Manchurian was exactly the same texture and appearance as the sauce on the bean-curd but several levels hotter. Of the three dishes, the bean-curd was probably the best but then I do have a real weakness for good bean-curd. The rice came in a large bowl and was distinctly grey in colour. All the portions were large but the quality was poor and the flavours badly balanced.
With only about half of the food eaten, we gave up and stopped eating, ordered another beer to help wash away the nasty sticky taste of the food and skipped dessert. Why is it that when you've left half your food the waiter STILL wants to push a pudding on you? We declined politely but with increasing irritation.
The bill when it came was for 1170 Rupees which was approximately £15. The waiters predictably brought the change with no 50 Rp notes ensuring they got a bigger tip. I suppose we could have given them just 30 Rp but that would have been pretty insulting even if it were quite justified.
One thing which really annoyed me during our meal was that the restaurant kept the door open for most of the time. Whether this was an attempt to lure unwary tourists in - 'Look, here are some nice clean English people eating lots of food in our lovely restaurant' - wasn't clear but the side effect was a massive influx of mosquitoes and midges. If we wanted to sit outside, we'd have looked for a restaurant with a terrace and dosed ourselves up with DEET to prevent biting. October is still warm enough to have to consider the health risks of mosquitoes and making your customers into a blood sacrifice for bugs is a pretty extreme tactic to encourage custom.
I'm now more alert to avoiding The Host. On our return to Delhi at the end of our trip we did exactly what we should have done to start with and went straight to Zen in B-block where we knew the food, service and atmosphere would all be perfect and the bill only a few pounds more. The Host won't be getting our business again unless of course we make the same mistake and get disoriented and stumble in again. But maybe next time we'll turn round and walk straight out again any restaurant that can destroy a Tom Yum soup the way The Host did, doesn't deserve repeat business.
The Host Restaurant5
Ratings
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"Must See"-Factor
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Budget Friendliness
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Ambiance
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Food
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Service
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Prices are fairly standard for Connaught BUT the food quality didn't justify the cost.
