Zambar

Cuisine: South Indian

Contact Information: 3rd Floor, Ambience Mall, Nelson Mandela Marg, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi. Phone Number 011 49422222 ext:505

Overall Image : Excellent reasonably priced South Indian fine dining

Review : There are quite a few restaurants in Delhi which claim to offer authentic South Indian fare. Most of them are so NOT south Indian that you wont be surprised to see butter chicken and chinese food on the menu. Before you begin to wonder, yes its true. There are actually restaurants in Delhi that claim to be South Indian restaurants but also serve mughlai, chinese and chinese mughlai!!

So in this factual backdrop, I think Zambar was a breath of fresh air. Just walking into the restaurant, you get the whiff of typically south indian spices which can be traced to the open kitchen within seconds.

Since they had a special promotion going on for Coastal food, we opted for the coastal Thali (which is like a platter with lots of small bowls with a variety of items). The thing about Delhi is that being land locked, sea food is really expensive and rarely fresh. But the thali included 2 kinds of fish, shrimp curry and masala crab which was quite impressive. Apart from the seafood, the thali also contained rice, rassam (which is like a south indian starter soup), vegetarian dishes, appam (which is a bread/pancake made from fermented rice) and dessert!

Honestly, being a big eater, i found it difficult to polish it all off… but i did J. The best thing about the thali we ordered was that it showcased a variety of dishes without having to crack your skull trying to decide what to order. But the highlight of the evening was the price. Based on the picture attached to the review, you can see the size of the thali and imagine that this would cost quite a bit. The truth is it cost around Rs. 800 per head including taxes which was not bad at all. That’s around US$15.

I would definitely recommend this place to someone looking for a fine dining experience in a modest budget with high quality and authentic South Indian food. Two big thumbs up from me.