Cafe Tesu : A delightful cafe beating the mayhem outside

MEENAKSHI RAO finds a rare cafe that has its wines rightly chilled & its Bellini rightly mixed to go with innovative and delicious food platters

What do we do well which the French are known to do innately better? For one, India has been refining and Indianising France’s eclectic street cafe culture by creating its own food and ambience to suit the Indian eye, especially in metros like Delhi.

Paris abounds with cafes that spread their tables on to the pedestrianways through the afternoon and well into the night and nobody minds sidestepping the walkways as the gentry sips their coffee or wine with the cheese, looking out into the vista, chirping with friends or just enjoying a few different strokes on their sketch pads.

That’s Paris for you. Cool and happening on the streets, thanks to its vibrant climes. Delhi can’t really stretch its cafes into the streets and doesn’t have the weather conducive for a roadside existence even for a short coffee break.

But amid the heat, dust and pollution, it is quaint eateries like Cafe Tesu which emerge as head-turners not just for their stunningly white ambience but also for the aptness of their platters and decor that they recreate to give you the best of all the cafe worlds.

You may think it is audacious, maybe even suicidal, to perch on one of the busiest, honking roads of a 250+ SPM Delhi street, and serve the best food platters in town, pairing them with the right wines and cocktails, but Cafe Tesu does brisk business doing just that.

Glassed out into the street on one side of the Essex Farms compound on Aurobindo Marg, this refurbished bakery is now a trendy new hotspot doting on its wide selection of cuisines, art and alluringly white and subtly rustic interiors. So what’s different from the myriad cafes that dot marketplaces like Khan Market or malls?

This one is part of neither and stands alone doing its job as crisply as it serves its thin-base pizzas fired from its coal oven, or for that matter its crisp beers that make you while away your time interestingly.

Cafe Tesu stands out for its innovative eats and the newly introduced wine and cocktails pairing it accords to its platters. The good thing may be its eats but the best thing about the service is that this cafe is one of the rare eateries that serve its wines and cocktails perfectly chilled. The Bellini here is heavenly and just right for a cool summer sip mixed deliciously as it is. Cracking the chilling point of a drink, especially wine, is an art few excel in but the staff at this cafe has been rightly trained by its young owner.

For a cafe in the middle of traffic mayhem, this one gives you a strange kind of peace if you are there in non-hours. By the evening, it flowers into a sold-out young joint with just the right music, space for many and bites that are done innovatively by young chef Himal and his team of tasters who have curated some of the healthiest tasty delights that any cafe would honour your wellness quotient with. Himal, who learnt the art of food from the streets of Darjeeling and then through the expertise of the dimsum kings of Delhi, tells you that “we believe in doing up the platters just right and sourcing everything from fresh produce.”

So if there, do not miss out on the quinoa salad cased in cauliflower crème doused baked beetroot with honey splashed fresh rocket leaves on the side. The cafe is high on chicken which is delectably undertoned when in its boat-shaped dimsums and fully flavourful when flying its wings. With a sip of the Bellini, these taste awesome but you could enhance the experience with a Prosecco in your tall glass while biting into the Japanese Sushi Bar delights or the correctly Pan Seared River Sole or, for that matter, their tiger prawn speciality.

The full-bodied pinot noir and cabernet sauvignon rev up the Guinness-glazed New Zealand Lamb Chops and the caramelised Balsamic Goat Cheese Spaghetti.

The rightness of being stretches all the way into the “just right” sticky rice accompanying the Thai Green Curry and the lamb burger that the ever smiling chef Himal turns into a baby bite on demand.

All said, Cafe Tesu is the place to be for any age, especially for its food and wine platters, not to mention the freshness of its produce.

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 13 May, 2018