Flavours of home

Outstation students prefer the services of dabbawalas for home-style food.

Outstation students who have been flocking to Delhi University might be flaunting their legs in hot pants and mini skirts, but when it comes to food, it is ghar ka khaana (home-style food) for them. North Campus has various dabba (tiffin) service providers who deliver food that tastes like the real deal and comes at budget rates.

Kapil Arora of Healthy Tiffin Service (Tel: 9868565726) says, “We make the food under very hygienic conditions and our services reach most of the areas around North Campus. Our tiffin consists of four chapattis, rice and two kinds of vegetable preparations.”

My Chef’s Kitchen (Tel: 9871156041), a dabba service provider based in Jawahar Nagar in North Delhi, just delivers vegetarian food. Raghav Bansal, the owner, says, “Today’s students are health conscious and they don’t want food laden with oil. We take all this into account. The tiffin is delivered to the the students’ PGs or flats.” Charges of the home delivered tiffin are anything between Rs 1,600 to Rs 2,000.

The dabba providers also cater to students looking for food from their home states. For Assamese home-style food, Lohit Da (9891158114) and Daadul Baruah (9990850749) are the popular dabbawalas. The tiffin is delivered twice a day for Rs 1,800 a month. “Thrice a week, we serve egg, fish and chicken prepared in typical Assamese style using ingredients such as tomatoes, lemon, potatoes,” says Baruah.

Some restaurants such as Food Factory (Tel: 27132713) in Vijay Nagar have a dabba facility. However, they mostly cater to residents of in and around Vijay Nagar and Hudson Lines.

Girls are lucky as far as the cost of the tiffin goes since it is assumed that the appetite of boys trumps that of girls. “Dabba price for girls is Rs 600 to Rs 800 while for boys it is Rs 1,000 Rs 1,200,” says Kapil Arora. “Boys generally need more food.”