We put our usual eating habits aside to try this vegetarian takeaway
Keto pizza
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Let’s start with a disclaimer - we are not into healthy eating. Nor are we conscientious about our food intake like, say, the vegan are. On the contrary, our ideal breakfast is incomplete without pork sausages, crispy bacon and fried eggs. Red meat, greasy curries, juicy burgers and pepperoni pizzas are the kind of things we normally look for on restaurant menus.
Belgian waffle churros
But, we decided to try a little experiment in the office yesterday. We got food delivered from a place that is not just purely vegetarian but also has low-carb and keto-compliant items. Just for one meal, we took a shot at alternative eating. So for better or for worse, we ordered a bunch of nutritious food items from Ghef's, a takeaway that opened recently in Bandra West.
Watermelon juice
Here’s what we asked for: keto pizza ('250), watermelon juice ('120), Belgian chocolate churros ('200) and crunchy detox salad ('180). It’s the sort of order that would have made even someone as famously finicky about her diet as Madonna proud (one of the alleged points of conflict between the singer and her ex-husband, the British director Guy Ritchie, was that when he would make her a complete roast chicken meal, she would end up picking only at the carrots). So keeping our fingers crossed, we tried the salad first. It consisted of broccoli, lettuce, tomatoes and only a little bit of chopped onions and cucumber, with a layer of corn flakes justifying the word "crunchy" in its name. Did we like it? Not really. The sugary syrup it was flavoured with didn’t work with the different veggies. Plus, we are not really gung-ho about corn flakes, as you might have guessed from our requirements for an ideal breakfast.
Crunchy detox salad
So, we took a sip of the watermelon juice to cleanse our palate. In our books, the only way you can mess this drink up is if the melon itself is not sweet enough and, to compensate, you end up adding too much sugar. Thankfully, the juice we had had no such issues. Instead, it made for the perfect summer cooler.
Shifting our attention to the keto pizza, we first had to recheck online what a keto diet actually entails since we are no expert on the subject. What we learnt is that it emphasises on fatty foods that have low carb content. Educated, we tried to unwrap the rectangular pizza from the silver foil it came packaged in, only to find that the base is as stuck to the foil as wet paper would be to a wooden table. So, we used a spoon to scoop out the dish, which made us wonder - is this a pizza at all? Even the base is different from a pizza crust because bread is a no-no here given its keto credentials. But whatever the answer, the dish hit the right spot. The cheesy substitute for a normal crust gave us a sense of comfort after the alien flavour of the detox salad. And instead of having a tomato sauce base, it had bits of the real fruit, along with onions, as the toppings. We are not saying, however, that the dish made us question our first love when it comes to pizzas - a classic pepperoni one. But at the same time, you wouldn’t have to point a gun to our head to make us try it again.
That left the churros. A Spanish sweet dish that is wildly popular in the West, it has also made its way into the menus of many Mumbai eateries over the years. Ghef’s adds to the list, and does a good job while at it. A chocolate coating added a layer of sweetness to the sugary churros without making it sickly. And decorative sprinkles added a suitable amount of crunchiness to the overall spongy texture.
So, once we were done with eating everything we had ordered, we evaluated our experiment. Was it a success? Will we add the concept of "healthy eating" to our daily dietary intake? Probably not, to be honest. But having said that, what we do know now is that if, God forbid, our doctor ever orders us to make a drastic change in our eating habits, something like a keto pizza would mean that our life is not over when it comes to taste.
Time: 11.30 am to 11 pm
At: Shop no 7, 142, RK Patkar Marg, Waterfield Road, Linking Road, Bandra West
Call: 7700999613
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