Eat & Stay Lean With Lean Chef

Rocky and Mayur have ventured out to explore food from all parts of India and curate videos on Askme.com  I'm contributing my part by relishing my favorite dishes at Lean Chef and sharing my views with you all! You can also upload your video review on AskMe  and stand a chance to meet Rocky and Mayur.

If you are my regular reader, you would definitely know how big a foodie I'm! And since the day I've shifted to Delhi, it's literally a food paradise for me. It's not that Ahmedabad didn't have good enough places to eat; it was more of a case of having eaten at most of the places! (Yeah, that happens when you have spent most of your life at one place)

Coming back to the point (I know this is my regular phrase as I tend to take detours even while blogging!), it was my week off and I was feeling antsy. I had spent the entire morning doing nothing (for me nothing means reading, reading and reading), and it was time to get out of home and see the world moving past me. What better way to do that than to go out and eat your fill? 

Unfortunately, as I'm new to Delhi, I don't know much of places and I tend to get lost when I'm driving. As I had stayed in my company's guesthouse in GK2 initially, I know about M Block Market, which is full of eateries, and it's quite near from where I stay. 

So there I was, in the middle of the M Block Market, surrounded by eateries. The sign board of Lean Chef caught my attention (I'm definitely sorry that I didn't think of taking its picture) and bam! I knew where I was going to eat.

As soon as I entered, I was greeted with this sight:

                                        

Isn't it cozy and cute? Perfect for a light late lunch (I went there at 3! Apparently I was being lazy even for lunch :P ) Although the cafe is on the smaller side, it's really charming. See this board:

                         

And I loved the idea of open kitchen — your food is prepared in front of you and the cook himself serves it. Perfect. As most of the times I'm confused (well, you can make that out from the title of my blog, can't you?), I took my time looking around. 

                             

                

                         

Finally, I settled on 200 calorie mushroom burger and chocolate pancake for the dessert. If you don't know, let me tell you a secret of mine: come little bit closer — I love, love, love mushrooms. All types of mushrooms. So deciding on mushroom burger was a no big surprise. And chocolate pancake? Do I even need to justify? :P ;)

After placing the order on the counter, I took a table. There I encountered this cute sign on the table:

                               

I loved "burn your wallet" part. I always find living in Delhi a bit expensive. I daily feel I'm burning my heart along with my wallet. Anyway, while I was keeping myself amused by checking in the cafe on Facebook (Of course how can I miss that?!), observing other patrons and generally doing time pass, my order arrived! Yay!

Here's how my 200 calorie mushroom burger looked like:

                       

                      

                      

Yup, the chips in the above picture are baked! Totally healthy. And here's my pancake!

                     

                     

Let's start with the things that I liked.

Ambiance: I love cozy places, and this cafe was absolutely cute with its small tables and witty posters and boards.

Chocolate pancake: Yup, this dish needs a special mention as I never thought it would be so lip-smacking and downright droolworthy. Did you see the dark chocolate layered in the middle? And the sauce on the side was like an icing on the cake. I really felt like marrying the pancake and spending rest of my life adoring it.

Service: Even though it was partly self service, I liked the attitude of the guy manning the counter. He was very receptive of my feedback. Who will not like to be appreciated?

Now about the things that I didn't like.

Space: It's fine to have small, cozy tables but I think there should be some bigger tables for families. I know, I know, this place is more for friends but what if my entire family wanted to make it a family meal? We would be elbowing each other. What a nightmare it would be!

Mushroom burger: I just have three words to say about it: Too much salt. Really, sad.

Conclusion: Of course, I will visit again but I definitely won't order mushroom burger. Or I hope it was one-off thing?