Eating out these days often seems pretty scary, especially for food bloggers like me. Well, you can hopefully guess the reason. The ingredients that the restaurants are using can cause serious damage to your body in the long term. The momentary explosion of joy for your taste buds doesn’t always guarantee a nutrient-rich healthy meal. Also it’s not always eating good, it’s about not eating the unhealthy ingredients as well. And at eateries you can not always get into their kitchen to check what they are using to cook your meal. And often, we tend to ignore these factors when we plan to eat out. But slowly with increase in health issues and ailments worldwide, people are becoming more conscious about what they are consuming. It’s not only necessary to work-out; the major element that can keep you fit and healthy is your food and beverages. Recently I was invited by a café in the Saltlkae Sector-1 area for a food sampling session, called D Talks Adda and immediately after receiving the mail it struck me that the work’D Talks’ must be actually meaning ‘detox’. When I confirmed with the owner, he said my assumption was correct, and I was immediately interested as this was one place that promises to detox and revive your body and soul, paired with some awesome ambiance fitting for a great adda session.
When every other eatery is keen to earn fast cash by selling garbage, there are few places that care about their patrons and clients. D Talks Adda has got its loyal set of customers who very well know what this café has to offer. This is a sports-themed vegetarian café. If you are dining at the café, you can have only the vegetarian options, whereas if you ask for home delivery some non-veg options can be parceled to you that come from a different kitchen.
Unless you have a word with the floor manager or the owner of this café, you won’t know the good things they are doing behind the scenes to dish out the guilt-free tasty food prepared with almost no harmful elements. In this world of pollution and impure food products, keeping yourself healthy is very difficulty and of utmost importance. Apart from training your body you also need the healthy food. As already said, our food intake is surely a major part of it that determines how healthy we are from the core. At very few places in the city you’ll get something that’s somewhat good for your health, still satisfying your taste buds.
D Talks Adda believes in oil-free cooking, use of stevia instead of sugar, use of Moringa oleifera for its antioxidant benefits, and many more! It’s serving you the tasty food items prepared in a healthier way! Using bits of Moringa oleifera in almost every food item was more than an interesting fact for me, this element tastes a bit bitter, so you can not put a lot of that into food. I haven’t heard that any café uses an antioxidant for health benefits of its patrons, seriously! I’m truly impressed after learning this fact. I know a few places in the city (including a bakery) who uses Stevia, which is again very much recommended and provides the similar sweetness as sugar does minus the disadvantages of using too much sugar. Also most of their items are baked at D Talks Adda, even the nachos. They use pure ghee brought in from Haryana when they need to fry or toss something, so they don’t use oil in any case. So, it’s NOT always a ‘no-fat’ cooking mode or meal they are dishing out, it’s a healthy food option they are providing cutting down the harmful cooking agents and components. Only thing I observed is, they are providing too much carbohydrates in their meal which is not good for everyone I suppose. So, that needs to be taken care of.
Now coming to the ambiance, that’s another big advantage of this café. This place is so urbane, colorful, vibrant and extremely young to its core. As already said, it’s a sports-themed café and they have actually tried their best to fit in as many sports related elements as possible in the interior design. There is a resized version of a boxing ring where we were actually seated with a portrait of Muhammad Ali in the backdrop. There are racing car tracks hanging down from the ceiling atop the bar counter. There are cricket bat and cycle wheels themed high stools. The flooring in most places is done by green glass-like carpets. There are hanging badminton shuttlecocks with lights fitted in them, on the other hand there are hockey stick themed door handles! For soccer lovers, you get such nicely themed sofas with silhouettes of soccer players in the backdrop. There is a separate section altogether for bookworms with a raised wooden platform, where you can sit, sip and read your favorite novel, no one will ever bother you! There is a dedicated wall for board games as well close to this reading section. The lighting is also just perfect, not too dark or over-lit. Overall, I absolutely loved the ambiance!
Now coming to the food items we tasted. First, let us cover the beverages we tried. They serve amazing freshly prepared juices here where you can actually feel the fruit; it’s not those packed, preserved or canned fruit juices. Stevia is used here in these juices instead of sugar.
We tried two such drinks – one is called Anulom Vilom and Surya Namaskar. Both were really good and recommended. The former one was prepared with fresh pineapple blended with orange juice. The later one was primarily a watermelon based drink, having the goodness of mixed fruits.
Coming to the food items, we were served – Rajma corn tikki which was oil-free and had enough crushed rajma and sweet corns in it, though I felt it was pretty dry, it was crumbling due to dryness. The Nachos which was served next with the dip was really nice, these were baked and didn’t have the overdose of the masalas, so I really loved this. The third starter which was served was called Knocci, it’s actually a pasta dish with an Indie tikki twist to it, and these are basically soft dough dumplings with shredded cheese on top and tangy red gravy base. This was nice but I guess the quantity was tad less, which can be a concern with some.
In the main course, we tried the Chinese Sizzler, which was pretty nice. It was served with a Manchurian patty having minced veggies in it. Along with it there was broccoli, bell peppers, cabbage leaves, etc and crispy spring rolls along with tossed rice. We also tried the Burritos, and this Tex-Mex food also had a desi touch to it. Here the tortilla was somewhat replaced by oil-free soft parantha having the veggies filled and topped with lettuce leaves. I felt that the filling was not juicy and it would have been great if the fillings were tad more flavorful. But next we tried the Lachha Parantha with Mushroom masala gravy which I thoroughly loved. The mushroom masala gravy was immensely flavorful and the mushrooms were chunky, fresh and juicy, just perfect! The parantha was not at all soggy and was pretty soft.
We tried two desserts after this, the Apple crepe and the Special Sundae! Both were pretty good and special mention for the presentation of both these desserts, they have got the looks that can kill.
Both these tasted nice and of course pretty sinful, the sundae was loaded with gems, cherries and apple slices. So, the meal ended on a sweet note and we were pretty full by this time! I also loved the service and the hospitality, which was so warm, informative and prompt.
There are so many good points about this place which have been mentioned, for which you should visit this place at least once and check it out for yourselves. And I really hope the points of improvements highlighted in the review will be worked upon, so that customers can be better served. I thank you all for your time and patience to go through this review and I really hope this has given you enough insight about this lovely quaint café in the bylanes of Saltlake. My best wishes are with the management and hope they open up more outlets in the city in near future and this Saltlake outlet does really well and keeps trending on the gastronomical scenes of the city!
Cheers!
P.S. Big thanks to Oendrila for these amazing clicks!
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