Restaurant review: Home Chef, Shivaji Park

Statutory Disclaimer - the snaps are appalling, but it was a spur-of-the-moment dinner plan and I didn't have my camera with me! :( So bear with the bad phone-camera photos, please.

There had been a long-standing dearth of places serving Continental (for want of a better word) food in the strongly Maharashtrian neighbourhood of Shivaji Park. The place was thronged with restaurants serving Indian snacks - from authentic Maharashtrian grub (Prakash, Aaswad, Madhura) to Udipi-style rest-of-India dishes (Apoorva, Sujata, Gold Rush and others) All this till Oven Fresh came on the scene and took Dadar by storm. Delicious, authentic 'Western' fare - sizzlers, pastas, sandwiches, burgers were a revelation to the eager-to-try-new-stuff Dadarites. Not to mention the awesome stuff from their bakery - quiches, mini pies, rolls, cakes, puddings....drool!

My palate still tingles with the yummiliciousness of their Chicken Salad sandwich and their amazingly tasty Chicken burger with a hunk of a patty (McD's with your slender slice of processed meat, eat your heart out!). Sadly Ovenfresh turned vegetarian a few years ago and while still good, left a gaping hole in Dadar's foodscape.

Which looked as though it might be filled by the new kid on the block (its actually on the same block as Ovenfresh!) - Home Chef, down the road from Sushrusha Hospital. This tiny eaterie serves 25 at a pinch and has around 10 tiny tables and a counter for desserts. With fairy lights adorning the glass door, home-style posters proclaiming special discounts on cakes and pastries, and foot-tapping music, it has a warm, welcoming vibe.

But food-wise, Home Chef has quite some way to go before it can step into the gap left behind by Ovenfresh's vegetarian venture. I had the cream of chicken soup with celery, which was decent - the flavour of celery (fresh, pungent with a slight bitter aftertaste) came through with almost every sip. Though the soup itself was a bit gluggy in consistency, it was generous with small chicken morsels. The serving was large, too.



We proceeded to order 3 starters (Nachos with cheese and salsa, Garlic bread, and Fire-cracker sausages) 1 main (Vegetarian Lasagne) and 1 drink (Toblerone milkshake) from a menu offering rolls, wraps, sandwiches, salads, pizzas, pastas, sizzlers and other mains (barbeque chicken, risotto, mushroom pilaf etc). Each category has 4-5 dishes (at max) within it. Special point - they have completely independent menus for Vegetarian and Non vegetarian dishes (the menus
are wooden boards with the menu printed and stuck on them) - which confused me a bit since I got just the veggie menu and was left thinking that HC is a veggie place like Ovenfresh....

The food while being decently priced - slightly lower than Ovenfresh prices (INR 200 for pastas, INR 250 for sizzlers, INR 85-120 for starters), leaves much to be desired. Our nachos were (as we first felt) thoughtfully provided with the cheese sauce and salsa on the side.

But there was a strong flavour of something (possibly corn from the nachos) that overrode the cheese sauce (which had a strange sweetish-ness) and was only just-cloaked with the zingy salsa. I NOW know why restaurants prefer to drizzle on the cheese and salsa before shoving the lot into the oven for a quick bake - the flavours really come together in the oven!



The garlic bread was too heavy with the stretchy, gooey cheese and butter rather than garlic. I scooped on some salsa from the nachos and this immediately livened up the Garlic bread.

Firecracker sausages were chorizo-style - sliced on the diagonal, and stir-fried with garlic, chillies and onion - moderately spicy and tasty, but very oily as I got to the bottom of the boat-shaped bowl they were served in.



The lasagne was very tasty- but very spicy! And overflowing with sauce.

We ordered the Toblerone shake only to soothe our burning mouths (thanks to the Lasagne) - and it turned out to be a diappointing affair - not thick and rich as I'd expected but very like the milkshakes Mom makes at home - you know, all milk and no thick ice cream! Even the toblerone flavour was hit-and-miss, but the gritty,grainy trexture of poulverised nougat indicated that a couple of Toblerone triangles HAD been blitzed in the blender for this shake.

Service was patchy - the soup and starters arrived in record time, but then the staff went on a long holiday and refused to come take our orders for the mains. slow - which was great for us since we could talk, talk, talk and really catch up. In the end, we had to ask someone to come take our order (not because we wanted more of the strictly-OK food, but because we felt bad for the people waiting outside for a table!)

One point I'd particularly like to mention is that while their decor is of a smart cafe (tile-covered tables, nice wooden chairs, cool stone banquettes, a genuine brick wall) the crockery they used was way below par - plastic plates and bowls make me shudder with distaste - especially in a place which serves sandwiches for Rs 120 each. The lasagne, was served in the foil tray it was baked in. Small issues maybe, but they do contribute towards the overall dining experience.

On the whole - a nice place to catch up with friends (the menu is an all-day dining one) over some nibbles at any time of the day. The atmosphere is warm and cheery, the location is convenient and the menu is interesting. I hope that the lacklustre food and patchy service are just teething problems which will be ironed out with time and experience. All the best to the team at Home Chef, I'll be definitely paying a second visit a few months down the line!

Home Chef
71 Meher Building, Ranade Road, Shivaji Park, Dadar (W)
Landmark: Opp. Oven Fresh, in line with Sushrusha Hospital
Tel: 24455034, 24455035, 24453036