There is good news and there is bad news. The good news is that many new restaurants have opened in Delhi this year. Once upon a time all the openings were in Gurgaon which was not great for Delhi people who did not want to brave traffic jams of much more than an hour or get stuck in water-logged roads for the three months of the year when Gurgaon becomes some Haryanvi’s idea of Atlantis, the undersea kingdom.

The bad news is that most of the newish Delhi restaurants are not much better than those in Gurgaon where the average standard is pretty dismal. The National Capital Region (NCR), which is basically Delhi plus Gurgaon plus Noida (which is the one part of Uttar Pradesh that nobody bothers to travel to for the food), has nothing on Mumbai or Bangalore where great new restaurants keep opening.

Oh yes, Delhi is very good at the top of the market (Bukhara, Indian Accent, China Kitchen, Dum Pukht, 360, Shang Palace, etc) and the dhaba food can be wonderful. But at the middle of the market very few outstanding restaurants have opened in the last few years. If you want a reliable place to go to, the 50-year-old favourites (United Coffee House, Kwality etc) are still your best options.

I know because even though I keep trying to eat at home when I am in Delhi, on the grounds that I eat out all the time when I am travelling, I have forced myself to explore the restaurant scene over the last two months in the interests of keeping my readers well informed. (Which is........

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