Amazing Spanish Cuisine - at Sudder Street - Raj Spanish Cafe

Located at Sudder street this place has got its inimitable charm and an extremely relaxed ambiance with amazing food at extremely reasonable price and mostly foreign tourists around. This place has the charm of old Calcutta embedded somewhere deep inside it. It teleports you back couple of decades and leaves you there with some great food and people around.

I went in there a week back with couple of Maharashtrian friends of mine. They were absolutely impressed with everything out there, starting from the setting, ambiance, people, menu card, food, pricing, service... everything! To start with, here you will find Mexican, Italian and Spanish food. In the menu card the Spanish dishes have got their actual Spanish names, so it is better you know beforehand what do they actually mean or how are they supposed to taste. We went in for mostly Spanish dishes leaving out a few. You need to write your order on paper slips and hand it over to the waiter, finally you will get back that slip with prices written alongside each of the dishes and summed up showing your total payable amount. So the initial order slip itself transforms into your final bill. The prices written on menu card are tax inclusive, so it's really easy to calculate your final bill amount. Let's discuss about the food, we had ordered for:

a) Huevo Rellenos - It is one great starter, it is Tuna and tomato sauce mixed with egg yolks and topped with mayo. Served in half egg cups, really a great no-frill starter which will vanish in just no time. Must try.

b) Cafe Bombon - The description explains the drink quite well, it is Espresso and condensed milk topped with whipped cream. Worth a try.

c) Arroz A la Cubana - It is one of the mains having rice in it. It has got fine quality rice in tangy tomato sauce gravy, topped with double yolk fried egg. Really one refreshing dish. The runny egg yolks with tangy tomato and rice has got a great chemistry together. Worth a try.

d) Burrito - The only Mexican dish we tried at this joint. It is tortilla wrapped into a roll having fillings of chicken and beans inside, served with tomato slices and guacamole. Worth a try.

e) Spaghetti al frutti di mare - Only Italian dish that we had tried. It is basically a seafood spaghetti having veggies, squid, octopus, shrimp in it. It looks amazing and tastes great. Though I found it a bit bland which can be adjusted/fine-tuned by adding some sauce, pepper and salt to it. Though the dish is quite filling, so it is worth a try.

f) Tortilla de Patatas - This was one hell of an amazing dish! (picture below) It is very much Spanish by nature. It is a cake kinda slice prepared with egg having fried potatos inside (you need to refer the picture I have attached to understabd this!) It tastes great (add some tomato sauce and pepper to it if required) and gives some great cooking ideas. It is served with two pieces of bread and the whole dish costs just INR 40. Incredible! Must try.

g) Albondigas en salsa espanola - Another insanely delicious dish. It has got four medium sized chicken meat balls in an amazing spanish gravy (having finely diced veggies in it) served with french fries and bread. Must try.

Only one great dish, the Gambas al Ajillo was not available, maybe because we had reached the place very late, at around 4pm. Overall, the service is very quick, waiters are polite and billing process is pretty simple. Only I guess the hygiene can be marginally improved, but definitely the place is delivering much more than it is expected to do at this ultra reasonable rates! The dishes are prepared to perfection and in almost no time. Frankly speaking it just left us dumbfounded. I would recommend this place to each and everyone. Go try it out! It's a gastronomical wonderland! :)

Cheers!