Description for thumbnail image:
Two people fighting over chole in a crowded buffet line.
Blog post:
It starts innocently enough. A family of five, braving Delhi’s impossible traffic, finally arrives at the new all-you-can-eat buffet that just went viral on Instagram. There are promises of 99 dishes, four types of kulfi, and a live dosa counter that allegedly grants enlightenment with every bite. The establishment—somewhere between a food court and a war zone—is called “Masala Empire 2.0” and is located somewhere near Rajouri Garden, where GPS signals go to die.
Now, Delhi isn’t new to gastronomical ambition. This city has long mastered the art of claiming it’s had the best butter chicken since the Mughals. But this buffet—part culinary carnival, part competitive sport—reveals something deeper about Delhi’s dining psychology. It’s not just about eating; it’s about proving that your thali can sustain an infrastructural collapse. The height of the plate becomes an ego issue. You’re not just a person with hunger. You’re a juggler of gravies.
Walk past the chaat counter and you’ll find a man balancing eight aloo tikkis, screaming at his cousin to guard their seat from wandering aunties wielding dupattas like territorial flags. The seekh kebab guy, probably a minor celebrity by now, face glistening with ghee and determination, is calmly assembling what looks like a kebab-skyscraper. There’s a woman holding her third plate of mango kulfi like it’s a newborn child.
And in the centre of this food-fuelled frenzy, is what we can only describe as The Great Paneer War. It starts when one uncle accuses a teen overloading his plate of shahi paneer of “not having sanskaar.” This escalates quickly to a full-blown existential debate on buffet etiquette, economic inflation, and the price of paneer in pre-Partition Lahore. No one wins. But somehow, someone spills dal makhani on someone’s Birkenstocks.
But that’s not to say there isn’t beauty in this madness. For all the chaos, there’s an unspoken community spirit. Strangers help each other pile kulcha without structural failure. A child feeds his grandmother a bite of gulab jamun while sidestepping a tripping aunt. At one point, the live dosa guy pauses, smiles, and reminds everyone that “its dosa, not life insurance—relax!”
The Delhi buffet, then, is a performance of abundance. A grand spectacle of stretchy stomachs, stretchy pants, and stretchy definitions of portion control. It reflects a city that never settles for small servings—whether in politics, parties, or parathas. We don’t eat casually here. We wage flavorful wars and win with masala.
But perhaps it’s time for buffet-goers of Delhi to adopt one tiny principle: grace. The chefs behind the counters aren’t enemy combatants rationing survival food. The diners aren’t contestants in an apocalyptic gameshow. What if we balanced our plates and our expectations? What if we made space for someone else to reach the last pakora, even if our inner Delhi instinct says, “grab first, chew later?”
So the next time you enter a buffet restaurant and feel the primal urge to construct a biryani mountain that would intimidate Mount Everest, take a deep breath. Savor. Scroll less, smile more. Let your taste buds, not your Instagram feed, be the judge. And if someone else takes the last gulab jamun from your plate, maybe—just maybe—you let them have it. After all, that’s the true Delhi spirit, right? Food with feelings. Chole with chivalry. And a polite elbow nudge instead of a full buffet brawl.
#DelhiEatsChaos #BuffetBattles #MasalaMayhem #DilliDiFoodie #PaneerPolitics
Leave a Reply