Heart, Not Hype

THERE’S A QUIET revolution taking place on a corner in Delhi’s Kailash Colony. No fireworks. No molecular smoke. No waiters in white gloves. Just a kitchen, a chef, and the kind of food that wraps itself around your memory like a warm shawl in midwinter.

Chef Sagar Bajaj doesn’t raise his voice—not on the plate, not in the room. He doesn’t have to. After years spent cooking under Delhi’s flashiest restaurant groups, building high-octane spaces that buzzed with hype, he’s stepped off the carousel. He’s stopped spinning. And in the stillness, he’s found his sound.

At Makhna Deli, his first solo venture, the music is low, the lighting soft, and the food sings. It doesn’t perform. It simply arrives, confident and generous, bringing stories of homes and kitchens we’ve all been in before.

Makhna—a name thick with tenderness and teasing in Punjabi—is the opposite of the Instagram-baiting circus Delhi’s dining scene is slipping into. It’s not a “concept.” It’s not “elevated” or “deconstructed.” It’s cooked. It’s felt.

That’s the thing. In India today, restaurants are increasingly chasing style over sustenance, and serving seven spoons of foam at the price of a week’s rations. We’re calling it innovation. But let’s not pretend. The emperor is shirtless, and the kitchen’s gone cold.

What we need desperately is food that remembers. And chefs who remember why they began.

Sagar does. Born in Muzaffarnagar, raised between Delhi and Melbourne, trained in tough kitchens, he worked his way up the food chain. He’s seen the spreadsheets and the spotlight. But when the time came to plant his flag, he chose heart over hype. At 25, he returned to Delhi. At 35, he’s returned to himself.

The result is a restaurant that isn’t trying to impress you—it’s trying to feed you. Properly. Honestly.

At Makhna, I ate like someone who’d come home. Palak patta chaat that snapped with tang and memory. Seekh kebabs—mutton, roasted veg, mango and corn—each one different, none gimmicky. Southern-style tawa mutton and smoky Amritsari meat, rich and satisfying. Dal that was more than a side. Chettinad chicken that understood its roots. Breads that told you where they came from— beetroot lachha, charcoal naan, Malabar parota—without showing off. Desserts that didn’t need gold leaf: mango phirni, warm tawa gulab jamuns, milk cake khurchan so slow-cooked it tasted like time itself.

You leave Makhna full, not just of food, but of feeling.

Because the Indian restaurant scene is cracking under the weight of its own spectacle. We’ve traded flavour for fireworks. We’ve allowed creativity to turn into caricature. We’re paying four digits for dishes that look like science projects, taste like confusion, and leave our gut and wallet equally unsettled.

And meanwhile, the real cost shows up in our health and in our sense of what food is supposed to mean. Nutrition is not a trend. Taste is not a trick. And comfort is not shameful.

We need chefs like Sagar who have earned their scars, and now want to serve, not stun. Who cook from memory, not for magazines. Who are rooted in reality, not swept up in illusion.

Makhna isn’t just a restaurant. It’s a reminder that food should nourish before it should dazzle. That culture lives in recipes, not retweets. That hospitality isn’t about theatrics, but about making people feel safe, seen, and fed.

So here’s my hope. That we stop chasing froth and remember the stew. That we pay attention to the kitchens cooking quietly. That we invest in food that tells the truth. That Delhi—this bruised, brilliant city—becomes the capital of comfort, not just concepts.

And that we protect chefs like Sagar, who remind us that the most radical thing a restaurant can do today… is serve a real meal.

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