Daily Times

Roti has come out at a time when ghar ka khana culture is on the rise in Lahore at least. Off late, low-budget restaurants like Karachi Kanteen, What’a Paratha, Chai Kada and Grill & Bake have slowly but surely made their presence felt paving with traditional cuisine and affordable prices. The food on offer is aalu ki bhujia, haleem, qeema and sabzi served with roti or paratha, prepared with whole wheat or white and these restaurants ensure that the vibe and ambience of the premises resonate with our culture values.

This is a good time for Roti to come out. The market is now saturated with fast food joints or Western cuisine, Pan-Asian fusion cuisines and various others of which names we don’t even know how to pronounce. Trying to get in the buzz of moving ahead with the world, entrepreneurs have quite forgotten how wonderful our own traditional home-cooked food can taste. I, for one, would head out and grab a pizza from the newly-launched Papa John’s but would come home and see shaljam with roti and wonder if I wasted my money on that pizza.

I am not alone. When start-ups like the aforementioned open up, it gives us hope – all is not lost. We still have ghar ka khana to indulge in dedicated premises.

Roti has launched in Lahore in the Empire Centre building and the restaurant dedicates its menu to what we have grown up eating. I tried out their food and this is what I think.

STRENGTHS — the interior seems unfinished but going by what there is, the fact that an entire shelf is laden with spices, desi ingredients and condiments of the sub-continent with labelled jars takes you in. It’s like the entire sub-continent summed up in jars. It’s dim light, probably owing to steel glasses turned upside down, hung with the ceiling with bulbs in them. It does give a good cultural vibe. The walls are hand-painted and the seating is comfortable.

I tried their Dum Qeema, priced at Rs 280. It’s mince beef cooked with spring onions, garlic and ginger, infused with charcoal flavour and prepared in desi ghee. This is what the menu says. What I was served was a single serving with delicious qeema, rich in flavour and definitely enough for one person. What was great about the dish was that the meat was cooked to perfection without any raw element to it.

The market is now saturated with fast food joints or Western cuisine, Pan-Asian fusion cuisines and various others of which names we don’t even know how to pronounce. Trying to get in the buzz of moving ahead with the world, entrepreneurs have quite forgotten how wonderful our own traditional home-cooked food can taste

The parathas are well-done. They are not dripping with oil and the rich aroma of desi ghee adds to the taste without being so much as to make you sick.

I tried their Biryani which was priced at Rs 340. It was long-grained rice flavoured with spices, topped with coriander, tomatoes and fried onions. It was served with a side of mutton palak. What I like about their biryani was that the chicken boti was soft and tender, and not chewy or undercooked. Same could be said for their Bhunna Gosht which is priced at Rs 500 with some of the most tender mutton I’ve had in long.

I also like how Pakola and Shezan Mango were available in drinks. These are the drinks we crave for and these are the ones that reconnect us to what we have grown up drinking as treats. Job well done.

WEAKNESSES — the menu is achingly-compact. Home-cooked food or traditional cuisine or ghar ka khana list should be endless or at least a handful. The menu shouldn’t just start with sabzi with a few items to follow and end with biryani. What about aalu or matar qeema, karri, aalu maithi, bhujia, koftay, masar chaawal, gobi or even teenday. Some serious revision, please.

The restaurant is called Roti, but with the exception of roti, everything tasted good. The rotis are course, dry and tasteless. Lahoris like phooli hui roti, naram roti or chotti roti. The roti was small but neither phooli hui nor naram.

Biryani without aalu, shami or achaar is biryani wasted. If I am to have a single serving of biryani for Rs 340 without alu, shami or achaar, I’m setting my money on fire. I can have the same amount of serving for Rs 115 from anywhere else where they’ll serve me these accompaniments and I’ll leave happy.

For desserts, I had their gulab jamun. The mithai ka dabba gulab jamun was served hot but I was expecting freshly-prepared gulab jamuns with ghee.

Published in Daily Times, February 8^th 2019.