Catering muqabla

The GUIDE went on a binge trip sampling the cuisine offered by various city caterers and home food suppliers to give you a report card on the good, the bad and the ugly

What makes a caterer's dishes stand apart from regular hotel fare? Ask Avinash Dimble, proprietor of Good Food caterers in Salunkhe Vihar, and pat comes the reply, "The tradition we follow. Unlike a hotel, we cater to our clients' personal taste. For example-Our Muslim clients like it a bit spicy, while our Gujarati clients would avoid too many spices and so on. We keep that firmly in mind." Hence, in a pursuit to check if the city caterers could really serve us something that stood a class apart from regular hotel food, we sampled a few caterers in the city and here's what we found:


Tawa Chicken at Shyamoli. Pics/ Nikhil Ghorpade

Kharunissa Pathan's Home Cooking
A well-known home caterer in the city, Kharunissa runs cooking classes besides taking food orders for parties for nearly a decade. Operating out of her house at Shivaji Nagar, Kharunissa made it clear at the outset that she doesn't do home deliveries and also expects the customer to send their own containers to pick up the food unless it was a really special order. After discussing her menu options, we decided to sample her Chicken Dabba Gosht, which was her own personal favourite. However, that's when our nightmare began. Firstly, the dish that she sent across to us was Mutton and not Chicken Dabba Gosht as ordered! Apparently, she got confused about the meat we ordered. Secondly, instead of the rich creamy egg-layered dish that we had expected what we found was a watery spicy liquid with a few pieces of mutton swimming in it. Though, it could have passed off as watery mutton curry, this was no Dabba Gosht for sure. Also, we had placed an order for half a kg of the dish at Rs 250, however the quantity sent to us was negligible. On asking she said, it was boneless that's why it was less in quantity.
At: 12, Chitale Building, Shivaji Nagar.
Call: 25536300

Shyamoli Caterers
A caterer-cum-restaurateur Avinash Dimble's Shyamoli Caterers, also known as Good Food Caterers, is a must-visit place. A small joint with seating space for barely eight people, this place is almost always full and a quick bite of their food shows you why. We tried their Chicken Dum Biryani (Rs 80 per plate) served piping hot at the joint. A treat to the senses, the Biryani smelled and looked as good as it tasted. Smelling of fresh herbs, the Biryani was served in a brass pot. Succulent chunks of chicken with fresh herbs and basmati rice rolled in was simply delicious. The Tawa Chicken (Rs 160 ) had boneless chicken pieces freshly cooked with vegetables and served with a side dish of salad and was quite mouth-watering. Dimle lived up to his claims of serving a dish whose taste most hotels wouldn't be able to match up to.
At: Opposite Badhai Sweets, Salunkhe Vihar.
Call: 26850429

Modern Caterers
An old hand at catering, Modern Caterers has been well-established in the suburbs for several years. His specialty is non-vegetarian Mughlai dishes and Biryani. In order to verify his claims, we tried his Chicken Biryani (Rs 350 per half kg) and found it to be nothing above the regular ones, in terms of taste and presentation. Though the chicken was well-cooked and contained the right amount of oil, the dish was a bit low on spices and turned out to be a little bland. The caterer doesn't believe in good presentation either as the food was served sans any garnishing making a negative first impression. Though the Biryani was nice and worth the money we were paying, it lacked the wow factor we were hoping to find.
At: Laxmi Krupa Housing Society, Lokmanya Colony, Parmahans Nagar Road, Kothrud.
Call: 9890806068