Diva

For lack of a dish that I consistently order at Italian restaurants, I use minestrone as the standard by which a restaurant can be judged. So far, hadn't been too impressed by the thick tomato pastey concoctions served up at restaurants (except, surprisingly, Big Chill, where it isn't bad). The minestrone at Diva is by all means, divine. Just the right quantity, airily light and just the right balance of flavors. I had read an interview somewhere by the owner that her food was hardly about the cooking, it was more about the shopping for ingredients. I think she was being overly modest – that minestrone belied a lot of work that must have taken place to get it so right. Most of the other dishes we ordered were very good, though the lasagna was distinctly boring.

We've only dined there once, so it would be hard to make a bang-on-the-table proclamation, but I definitely will come back for a second round. I liked the décor of the place, largely gimmickless but without resorting to the passé minimalism of others, still very comforting. While I understand that service is supposed to be leisurely at genuine Italian joints, we had a really hard time getting waiters to even acknowledge us. Which leads me to an observation by the owner that she had tried to open another restaurant in delhi that had failed, then adding that for diva, for a long time, her clients had been almost exclusively expat. There seems to be a suggestion here that delhiwallas don't know how to appreciate the genuine thing, which may be partly true considering the popularity of the somewhat spicey "Indian-italian" cuisine (case in point – paneer tikka pizza) served at lesser places. Yet, somewhere inside, perhaps unreasonably, there is a feeling that the service was maybe a little bit more enthusiastic for the expat patrons?