Cheese Chaplin

Quick bite ♦

Did someone say cheese?
Cheese Chaplin, tucked into the air-conditioned, office-like basement of a tiny building draped with bougainvillea in Lado Sarai, is primarily a purveyor of domestic cheeses, made by the shop’s own brand Dairy Craft (which has been around since the ’90s), and some imports. Cheese Chaplin has been delivering the curdled and coagulated stuff to hotels and other clients for about a year from this location.

But there’s a sign for pizza too…
Some months ago, mild-mannered “team member” (the company has no designations) Vikas Bharti, and his colleagues in the on-site trial kitchen, started making pizzas. There are about six kinds of thin-crust pies, but customers can ask for different combinations (the store stocks olives, sun-dried tomatoes, etc). The pizzas (R90-R150), though small, are several notches above their roadside relatives – the dough is rolled out as thin as possible (and whole wheat is available on request), making for a tasty snack. The cheese, of course, is miles beyond the typical Amul topping you’d usually get for this price. Worth a stop if you happen to be tramping through the village.

Anything else?
Bharti has a couple of Cokes in a fridge, but you can get a R5 fountain soda from the stand a few shops down and bring it over. While we waited for our pizza, we tried a few Dairy Craft cheeses – the pure buffalo milk bocconcini is delightfully creamy, with a thin skin, and the smoked cheddar is a good deal at R135 for 200gms. Bharti was putting a new mascarpone through its paces by way of a few trial cheesecakes, and let us sample (or rather, finish) them.

Originally published in Time Out Delhi, May 2012.