It  was the holy month of Ramadan again,  for a foodie non believer like me means it’s time to make a trek through the ghettos of old Delhi for my annual iftari food pilgrimage. Mind you it’s an adventure while most of the year the Jama Masjid area is relatively deserted late at night, during Ramzan one can’t tell the difference between day and night … Hiding amongst the crowded and somewhat smelly by lanes of Delhi 6 are 2 of the city’s worst kept culinary secrets i.e. Karim’s and Al Jawahar restaurant. One late night it was time again to play Russian Roulette once again with your arteries and intestines alike…

Making our way down the gully to Karmis we were greeted with the familiar line of people waiting to find space in one of those cramped rooms with extremely uncomfortable seating… Sometimes it makes me think why we really put ourselves through the torture is the food really that good… Well a voice inside me begs to differ…There are quite a few whispers going around that the food has lost its sheen. So after being ushered to ancient tables that one can only describe as encrusted with splashed gravy since the days of the Mughal emperors… We were give filthy laminated pathogen cards (oops Menu cards) one must wonder at this point if they which out of the floor and the menu card is more hygienic… Braving the circumstances in the craving for good food The hulk soldiered on and decided to order chicken stew, Keema curry minus the liver and brains, a plate of seekh kebabs, a Shammi Kebab, a Biryani and a Sheermal… Yes I did order that much and since it was so cheap I didn’t really care if it went to waste. The Hulk is not one to care about the starving millions of Somalia or whatever shit hole you were born in… Well Tough luck to you and if you didn’t get onto a boat to Europe then you probably aren’t the smartest soul… Considering the euro lefties are welcoming you with arms and pockets wide open…
Back to the food…
First came the shammi Kebab… Now thank fully it wasn’t overloaded with spice but was hard and felt like something that wasn’t cooked fresh more like something they probably made in the morning, microwaved and served them to unsuspecting customers… The Seekh Kebab were below average to put it midly… I love the way restaurants / chefs/ cooks in India hide behind spices when making a rather substandard product… The Seekh Kebabs were weaker than Bahdur Shah Zaffar at the fag end of the Mughal Empire… The only way to describe them is terrible…

On to the Mains
The chicken stew was par for the course expect for the fact they had replaced the chicken with what can only be described as the skeleton of a chicken… The chicken more impoverished that the poorest of the poor in Africa… Next times you could just add bones and not bother with the meat and charge me for just the bones… cuz I have to look for meat with a micro scope…
Next up the Keema Curry barring the fact it was soo full of ghee that once I removed to ghee from the dish there was approximately 50 % of the dish left… But on the up side as always the Keema was amazing… Just as I remember it from the last time I was there…
The Biryani was the one dish that really tasted awful… Infact there was something so wrong with the dish I was retching after a couple of bites… again I suspect it was something that was pre-prepped and not stored properly… It had too much ghee and just plain taste wrong… I have had biryanis from all around the country and this edition of the Karims Biryani is probably the worst I have ever eaten… I have had road side biryani that is guaranteed to give you Cholera, Jaundice, Diarreah and every other third world disease in the book and yet taste better… This one was just off!!! And went to waste after I had like 2 bites of it…
For deserts the Phirni was something I really looked forward to… In the past the Hulk has devoured a record 16 phirnis in one sitting… Did I not tell you Phirni is probably my top 5 favorite deserts of all time… As usual it didn’t disappoint and was like an oasis in the desert of what I can only describe as a poor eating experience..
Next time I am likely to venture some where else… My love affair with Karims is most definitely over… I need to take a break from my annual trysts with this place…
Overall rating 2 /10 really really horrid experience with the food but the people who serve it still do so with the same enthusiasm and love as always…