DIVA
Cuisine: Italian
Location: M-Block Market,GK-II
Chemistry was over, so we obviously wanted to chill, eat out, hence got myself landed there with 3 friends. Initally, we had decided to eat italian but not being able to find an italian resturant close by, whe decided to drop down at GK-II and hunt for a good place to eat. We did trot around the place but none of the resturants looked inviting and then we spotted this one and were saved from cursing ourselves for coming to GK-II.
The place is neatly done, italian style. They had these beautiful tall glasses and a working barbecue kinda thing behind a glass walled room. There were candles too all around. But decor was not the best thing about this place. As I wasn't too familiar with italian dishes, I asked one of the waiters to help me out and I narrowed on "Carciofi alla griglla in mille foglie". I was shocked when what I was served looked like a cone filled with some stuff, a kind of sauce/chutney spread on the rest of my plate and some green leaves for making it look nice as I thought I had ordered a starter instead. By the time I got done with it, I was left wanting for more although I couldn't have had anything else as I was completely full. One of my friends had a crab stuffed with chicken(and things he says he wasn't able to recognise) and he simply loved it too.
The only thing that will keep me from visiting the place often is money. Although it offers a nice experience, it is a bit expensive. The dish I had was for Rs.450 and the crab one was for Rs.290.
In brief:
- Decor: 3.5/5
- Food: 4.5/5
- Value for money: 3.5/5
-Rungta
An Unexpected Package
Ubuntu arrived today finally when I had given up all hope. There are ten x86 discs and four PowerPC.
I'll be keeping one of each and giving away the rest.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia.
Regarding the whole Wiki phenomenon,
Wired Magazine has run an incomparable four-page article and I will pick up a few bits of information from it. That article goes over the history and evolution of Wikipedia, what exactly "Wiki" is, etc. However I will concentrate only on Wikipedia and only on the present-day Wikipedia.
How is Wikipedia different from others?
Unlike Encarta Online and Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia is 100% free of any kind of charge. Also unlike Encarta and Britannica which offer 4500 and 80000 articles respectively, Wikipedia has an assemblage of about 500000 articles. Six times as many as Encarta and Britannica put together! Plus, there are no "Pay to read more" links or any advertising of any sort. In all fairness, they do need money to run (maintaining servers, staff, etc.) and for that they have a little link on the left that says "Donations", where people can go and give as much as their pockets can afford. However, they
never ask you for donations.
Also, while Encarta and Britannica employ a few thousand "intellectuals" to do their article-writing and researching, Wikipedia taps into each and every human being who has Internet connectivity and wants to write for the encyclopedia. More on this when I explain how Wikipedia works, up next.
How does Wikipedia work?
You can go to any article on Wikipedia, click on a link called "Edit" or "Edit this page", make any change or addition in the text that you deem correct, and click Save. The article gets instantly altered. You don't need to create an account and sign in. You just need to click "Edit", make the changes, and click "Save". It's
that simple. Similarly, you can search for something in Wikipedia and if you don't find it, you're presented with a link that says "create an article with this title", and if you click it, you're taken to a page that doesn't look quite unlike a Blogger : Create New Post page. You write your article, click "Save" and it's instantly available to the rest of the world. This is how I came to write my article on
Impulsive Highlighting.
All this of course poses two huge problems: firstly, if anyone can post anything, how do you know that the information on the encyclopedia is true? Well, the short answer is that you don't. Wikipedia has slightly lower accuracy rating than the paid encyclopedias. But the good thing is that if you find any entry lacking in substance or one that has incorrect facts and figures, you can modify it then and there. The second problem is vandalism: internet graffiti. And this is not a form of art. However, this is mainly prevented because there are more good people than evil people and any bad edits to the Wikipedia are usually reverted in about 1.7 minutes! Such is the dedication of the authors and administrators. Anyway, the good guys are helped by the fact that there is a thing called the "watchlist" for users to which they can add articles which they would like to monitor. So if any change is made to those articles, they're notified.
That, in short, is Wikipedia. Though you should definitely go and read that article on Wired Magazine.
Khana Unlimited (Connaught Place)
Pros: Rs. 99 per person and Unlimited food*. Constant and Instantaneous service. Takes half-an-hour from start to finish.
Cons: Starters are not "great". *Sweet-dish is not Unlimited. Some small things... read on.
So this restaurant in Connaught Place which everyone's been raving about (that is, everyone who happens to be over forty years of age and who belongs to my parents' sphere of friends, relatives and general well-wishers). This is also the restaurant started by the fat comedian. That would be Satish Kaushik or Satish Shah, I don't remember which. They are both extremely fat and comedians, so it doesn't matter.
// LocationThose who wish to skip the review and just pop in there, it's located in the Outer Circle, opposite Kake Da Dhaba, or in terms of theoretically more recognizable landmarks, it can be found if you keep moving in the Outer Circle until you see the sign for Minto Road (which should come on your left). Once you reach that sign board it's just a little ahead. You can't miss it.
// End LocationWe got our parking spot right in front of the restaurant, and our company of five instantly got seats while larger and Punjabier... erm... healthier-looking people were kept waiting outside (company of fifteen). If I had a stopwatch I would have told you exactly how much time it took between us taking our seats, them bringing the huge empty steel
thaalis, water and "Welcome Drinks" (
shikanji). There was a five-foot diagonal screen being shown by an LCD projector on the wall to our left, and on it, music videos (with loud-though-not-completely-uncomfortable volume of music) were being shown. Two gigantic banners across the walls proclaimed their motto in big, bold letters "Pay Limited, Eat Unlimited".
Please don't mind the redundancy with "shown"We were given menus, or we thought we were. Because what we were given was instead a list of the foods that we would be served. That was when I started loving it! This was the first restaurant that did not give you a book to read, and simply told you what was in waiting. No looking at price tags coupled with incomprehensible names. This joint's message clearly resounded in every aspect of its presentation and that was "
Aao, Khao, Jao".
Within about fifteen seconds of getting the "menu du jour", the food started rolling in. First came the starters, which were basically a round mini
samosa and a round mini
vada, with three kinds of chutney, and some salad. If I recall correctly there were about six empty bowls in the
thaali waiting to be filled. They didn't have to wait for long because the food started popping into them and within the span of a minute the plates were completely loaded with food. We were told that we just had to nudge a passing waiter if we wanted rice. Now the waiting system is also completely different in this "restaurant". No one actually waits for you. Unlike the localized waiters in all other restaurants, the servers in this place are "delocalized". Each carries a contraption which is basically three big serving bowls connected together like vertices of an equilateral triangle, which the server carries around, and they have a ladle (or
kadchhi if you prefer) of exactly the same size as the
katories (bowls) such that one ladle-full efficiently fills it up. Now, effectively you have three servers for each table. One guy has the
kadhi,
dal makhani and
boondi ka raita; another has
aloo shimlamirch (rassey waali),
palak paneer and
mix vegetables. These waiters keep wandering around. The first round of refilling is done automatically, while for the subsequent refills they ask you. We had rice as well. And
Tandoori Rotis and
Chapatis (Rotis) were served by a third person; also continuously. Once they think you look like you're two-thirds of the way through your meal, they automatically come and place a bowl of sweet dish next to your plate. In this case it was
sayvaiyyan (heaven knows how to spell this in Latin-1!); it was beautifully delicious. And we asked for refills. Unfortunately they don't have refills for the sweet-dish (should have read the fine print!).
Once you're done, they somehow detect this themselves and silently start clearing the table. As with everything else, the bill (check/receipt) came within five seconds of the clearing of the table (which, once it starts, does not stop even if you kindly ask them to).
Saunf is offered (actually we had to ask for it, but the manager smiled and said we didn't give them a chance to offer it on their own, though I thought it was the opposite and that they were almost shooing us out once we had eaten).
Meal eaten, bill paid. In less than thirty minutes, we were in and out. Efficient. Inexpensive (relatively).
--Karan
UPDATE: I checked. It's Satish Kaushik, the better of the two comedians. He's based in Karol Bagh, New Delhi. He probably figured since Ganguly had opened an eatery in Kolkatta and Tendulkar in Mumbai, it was his duty to umm open Khana Unlimited.
CULLINAIRE in GK-II. it's not very cheap, but the food's damn good.