What’s New, Delhi? bpb travelled North last weekend to find cool stores, bakeries, cafes and super chilled temperatures in the Capital. We returned to Mumbai as blocks of ice and desperately seeking a chisel. But also with lots of loot for you.

Eat

Elma’s Bakery, Cakes and Tea Room

It’s the kind of café you want involved in one of your significant life stories – maybe you wrote your first book here while gazing at the white grand piano; had a business idea over  blue coloured tea; or met someone super when a power cut made the candelabras go on.  An incident in a pretty café, a memory infused by the smell of freshly baked bread.

Run by the guys behind The Living Room (TLR), headed by a Le Cordon Bleu chef and sunlit by huge windows, Elma’s dishes out the freshest artisan breads (also rising to the occasion is cute, Amelie-esque manager who takes orders), breakfast, sandwiches, dessert and teas in a room that could be someone’s home, complete with Victorian tea sets. bpb recommends the superior sausage roll, Chicken Coronation Sandwich served with home-made mustard and topped with pretty clover leaves, jam scones with clotted cream. You can’t live here, but they are incidentally looking for someone to manage the place. More details on their Facebook page.

24/1 Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi, Monday to Sunday, call (011) 26521020 or view the Facebook group here, 10 am to 8 pm, breads start at Rs 120.

Boheme

Sitting pretty above curries (Gunpowder) and corsets (Bodice – see below), this rooftop restaurant/bar that overlooks the lake at Hauz Khas Village is a pretty place to enjoy Delhi’s chill. It opened just a few months ago, we learned, as we hiked a long, long way up to sip beer (they only have Budweiser) and wine under wood canapés, amidst foliage and a bunch of bird houses. We had no room for the Mediterranean food though considering our just-scarfed-down meal at Kainoosh, but we plan to return for the Arabiatta spaghetti soon.

22 Hauz Khas Village, Roof Top, New Delhi, call (011) 2656 1220 or view the Facebook group here.

Smoke House Room and Shroom

What could be more fun than dining inside a psychedelic mushroom, without the help of well, mushrooms. Find out at the Smoke House Room, a restaurant headed by Gresham Fernandes (one of our favourite Mumbai chefs), and at Shroom, the club next door where uber-creative architects have done just that. Here, food and drinks are pricey but made using seriously cool techniques – our soup contained “carrot air” and our martini came in a smoking lamp.

If you have the dough, get one of their tasting menus and look out for the new pork belly, launched last week. At the bar, get yum and cost-effective Rs 600 jello shot platter that comes with Tanqueray tonic, blueberry vodka, maple bourbon and B-52 flavoured blobs in soup spoons. We didn’t love: the intensely white lighting in the restaurant and random music selection on Saturday night.

Third floor, The Crescent Mall, Lado Sarai, Mehrauli, New Delhi, call (011)29523838 or view the Facebook page here, Rs 600 for a shot platter.

Bookmarked for our next trip: Circa 1193 with (we hear) gorgeous Asian food and view of the Qutub Minar from the rooftop; and Le Circque, New York’s French restaurant housed at The Leela Hotel.
Circa 1193, 1580 Kalkadas Marg, New Delh, call (011) 26644329; Le Cirque, The Leela Palace, (011) 39331234.

Shop

Bodice & The Grey Garden

Most of our acquisitions came from Hauz Khas Village, starting with Bodice, a fashion store where designer Ruchika Sachdeva does androgynous jackets with mad-awesome shoulder detailing and structured  dresses with interesting backs. The London School of Fashion graduate is at the store a lot, adding vintage briefcases and phones to the display and chatting with customers. Also, they do super fast on-the-fly alterations. We got a fun grey panelled dress with pink see-through top studded with grommets.

At The Grey Garden nearby, see new necklaces with old attar perfume bottles for pendants (can also double up as booze flask, we think) and interesting bags that evoke hot water bottles, Dali’s lip couch and furry disco balls. Get the pizza at the store’s dreamy café next door.
http://www.facebook.com/TheGreyGarden

Bodice, 22 Hauz Khas Village 2nd floor, New Delhi, visit http://www.bodice.co.in, tops start at Rs 4,000; The Grey Garden, 13A Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi, view the Facebook page here, Rs 2,000 for a necklace.

Love Birds and Les Parisiennes

Vintage vultures will circle around Love Birds to find a black leather purse with a white poodle; a Victorian headband, a hand mirror with Frida Kahlo self portraits painted on the back. Cool as some these finds may be (there’s also some rubbish to sift through), they’re super pricey so pick well.
We also heard about Les Parisiennes, run by a French designer who along with vintage jewellery and clothes, puts out croissants and coffee on the first Tuesday morning of every month. Unfortunately we visited on a Sunday when it was shut.

Love Birds, diagonally opposite Elma’s Bakery, Hauz Khas Village New Delhi; Les Les Parisiennes, P5B Shahpur Jat, Dada Jungi House, Asian Village, New Delhi, view the Facebook page here.

Ministry of Fashion
In Delhi so must flash LV? You’ll probably be heading to DLF Emporio mall where wallets (or from what we’ve heard brief cases) either swell with pride or coin purses cower. If you belong to the latter you can head to the mall’s Ministry of Fashion where Vivienne Westwood’s adorable Melissa shoes are at 40% off. We got our spray painted ballet flats for Rs 3,400.

1st floor, Shop 205, DLF Emporio Mall, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi, call (011) 40519663.

Green the Gap
This month-old upcycler’s store sells knick knacks that heart the environment. Ignore the seen-before elephant poo paper products and milk can bags. See instead super pretty newspaper quilled hair clips and wallets made out of tyre tubes. They weren’t accepting credit cards when we visited last week, so carry cash.

Hauz Khas Village 3/24  New Delhi, call 09711933654 or visit http://greenthegap.com, Rs 150 for a clip.