If I were to choose my favourite cuisine, it would most certainly be Japanese and if I were to choose my favourite city in India to eat in, it would most certainly be Delhi. However the Delhi food scape, barring the expensive and elite club of Megu, Wasabi and the likes, has been quite devoid of good Japanese restaurants.
The only silver lining in this horizon was the first conveyor belt sushi restaurant called Yum Yum Tree located in New Friends Colony. This restaurant, owned and managed by the effervescent couple Varun and Prathna Tuli, was a pioneer of sorts introducing the first ever pocket friendly all-you-can-eat sushi in India. When I had visited their restaurant in 2008, I was totally floored by the attention to quality and value for money offerings at the restaurant.
The couple have taken a step forward and opened a new concept restaurant in the Select City Walk Mall of Delhi by the name of Yum Yum Cha. The restaurant derives its name from the Chinese tradition of morning and evening teas where small tapas sized portions and dim sums are served along with the tea. It adopts this tradition and builds an entire menu around it to cater to all kinds of clientele.
The décor at the restaurant is very tastefully done with origami decors symbolizing different aspects of the menu, a wide open façade which gives an ample view of the kitchen and a vibrant seating area thereby enticing the passers-by to stop and give it a dekko.
On the food front, we started our culinary journey of the day with a Lobo Kai Thong (Rs.200) which was a cilantro based clear soup. The soup was loaded with flavours and had the right kick of spice which helped in whetting our appetites for the evening. The Veg Wonton Clear Soup (Rs.190) on the other hand, was quite average.
The restaurant doesn’t serve alcohol but its Virgin Mojito (Rs.450) makes up for that void. The Lonhjing Green Tea (Rs. 120) is also quite mild and refreshing and pairs well with the spicy Kung Pao Chicken (Rs.250). Both the drinks are served in interesting bottles which lend a great visual appeal to the drinks.
We tasted several Dim sums during our tasting of which the stand out ones were the Veg Yum Cha Vie (Sou Lung) (Rs.200) and the HarGaw Prawns (Rs. 300) The Crystal 3 Duck dumplings were a sheer delight and the fillings inside each of them were quite flavourful. We were served five different kinds of side sauces of which I loved the chilli and jaggery sauce and the lemon chilli sauce. The prawn and chives dim sums was interesting as the wrapper was made of potato starch – however, I found it a bit dense in taste as compared to the other better ones tried in the course of the evening.
Keeping up to the legacy of Yum Yum Tree, the Japanese Sea food Salad consisting of tuna chunks, crabs, scallops, mayo and cucumber was an excellently fresh and light salad with bursts of flavours in each morsel. Similarly, the sushi platter was simply mind blowing – fresh seafood, well-made sticky rice, and several little elements to suite the Indian Palate here and there made these small bites extremely memorable. Quite a few of them had a spicy finish thereby appealing to the spice loving Delhi crowd.
We also tried some mains like Chicken in Spicy Black bean sauce (Rs.250) and Vegetables in Celery Wine Sauce (Rs. 220) along with Burnt Garlic Fried Rice (Rs.230) which were quite decent. The Chickenin spicy black bean sauce and the burnt garlic fried rice was an amazing combination and I was quite capable of polishing it off completely by myself had I not already stuffed myself with the sushis and dim sums. Another very novel and interesting product we tried was Seafood in Paper Boat which is a soupy noodle dish served in a paper boat with live fire under it. The novelty of the dish starts and ends with the visual of fire under a paper boat as the soupy noodles, though loaded with seafood, tend to be heavy on the stomach. It is quite a wholesome dish and can be a quick single dish meal for a person in a hurry.
We rounded off the meal with Mochi Ice Cream which is a first in India as its preparation goes through an extremely delicate process and a lot of hard work is involved for getting the sticky pounded rice casing right. The colourful casings are filled with ice creams of various flavours, the most popular being green tea and coconut and jaggery. The elastic, chewy dessert is a bit of an acquired taste and may take some time for people to get used to it but overall, it is a very authentic and interesting dish to try out at Yum Yum Cha.
Throughout the evening, Prathna Tuli was on the restaurant floor interacting with the diners many of whom she recognized as repeat clients. Her hands on interaction with the diners, the vibrant décor and the excellently priced and innovative menu – all of these made it an evening worth remembering. The restaurant only needs to work a bit in the service department but apart from that they surely have a winner in their hands and the hard work put behind the conceptualizing of the menu shows prominently in the quality of the food. I will surely be going back for more !
Ratings (Out of 5)
Food: 4 | Ambience: 3.5 | Service: 3.5 |Overall: 4
Meal for two: Rs.1800 | CreditCard: Yes | Timings: 11 AM to 11 PM
Wheelchair Access :Yes
Address: 2nd Floor, Select Citywalk Mall, Saket, New Delhi.
Tel:011-41553030, 9810002994
This review was done on an invitation from the restaurant. Due judgment and care has been applied by the author to remain objective and unbiased in the review, but readers need to consider this review keeping this fact in mind.
