Varq: Raising the Bar for Desi Dining
Reasonably priced, quality Southeast Asian fare in an informal setting
The crying need of the hour is for an informal restaurant — whether in a mall or outside it — with filling, tasty food at prices that don’t break the bank. I’m grateful that I was dragged by a foodie friend to Tasty Tangles. The informal restaurant meets all my criteria, plus it is not pretentious, that bane of dining in Delhi.
You sit on padded benches at trestle tables and order by ticking off a list of items from an order form placed at each table. The cuisine here is Southeast Asian and within that ambit, every effort has been made to have something for vegetarians. Also, the menu focuses on those cuisines that are familiar to us, which means that no Korean and Japanese dishes are on offer. Instead,’what there is concentrates on Malaysia, China, Singapore and Thailand.
Half of the dozen appetizers are vegetarian. We ordered crispy duck wontons (Rs 159) that are generously-sized, deep-fried wontons filled with diced roast duck napped in hoisin sauce. Crystal shrimp dumplings (Rs 179) were the best of the appetizers, filled as they were with whole crunchy prawns in a translucent wrapper and steamed. Sesame and onion seed prawn toasts too were crunchy because of the sesame seeds; the amount of chopped prawn was minuscule, but at the price (Rs 179), who’s complaining? Chicken siew mai (Rs 119) was excellently made; they’re supposed to resemble half-open money bags and was a steal at the price.
The wet noodles and soups section (wet noodles? I wish they’d thought up a more felicitous name!) managed to be packed with Delhi favourites like sweet 
corn soup with vegetable dumplings (small: Rs 99, large: Rs 169) and hot and sour soup with chicken and prawns (Rs 139/199), as well as slightly unusual offerings like curry laksa with chicken and prawns (Rs 139/199). This shows that the management has done its homework diligently. While beef and pork do not make an appearance on the menu, duck and calamari do: an exact reflection of our tastes. Of the specialities, the roasted duck Singapore-style with hoisin sauce (Rs 549) is by far the most expensive item on the menu.
Tasty Tangles would be well advised to jazz up their store-bought hoisin sauce in-house, but the roast duck was perfect, the pancakes delicate and the juliennes of cucumber and spring onion 
worthy of a five star hotel. Lamb rendang (Rs 399) was perfectly adequate, especially at the price. The Singaporean black pepper lamb (Rs 399) was perfect.
It’s my bet that Tasty Tangles will be a huge hit before long, for its prices, quality and informality
VITAL STATS
Address: Tasty Tangles, 1st Floor, 38A-39, MGF Metropolitan Mall, A/2 Saket District Center
Tel: 011- 40533266
Open from: 11:30 am to 11:30 pm
Average cost for two: Rs.1000/-
Alcohol license awaited; credit cards accepted
Related posts