Agama Cafe

Rahul Prabhakar

2 months ago

5.0

The Greens of GK-II: An Afternoon at Agama Café I have, over the years, developed a healthy suspicion of the word "vegan" when it appears on a Delhi menu. Too often it is a euphemism for a sad bowl of steamed vegetables masquerading as a meal, or worse, a plate of imported quinoa priced as though it had been flown in on a private jet (which, I suspect, some of it has). So when a friend insisted I make the trip to M Block Market in Greater Kailash II to try a café that called itself Delhi's first farm-to-table plant-based experience, I went armed with my customary scepticism and, I'll admit, a small hope that I would be proven wrong. I was. Agama Café is the kind of place that could only have happened now — at this particular moment when Delhi's eating public has finally begun to separate the idea of "healthy" from the idea of "punishing." It opened in September 2024, the creation of Adit Chandna and Pranati Khanna, two names I did not know before this meal and expect to hear a great deal more of. What they have built in a fairly unassuming M Block address is not simply a restaurant but something closer to a small, self-contained ecosystem — one that happens to also feed you exceedingly well. The Idea Behind the Idea There is a particular type of restaurant story I have grown tired of — the one where a founder discovers a "life-changing" diet on a holiday abroad and returns home to open a café serving overpriced approximations of what they ate there. Agama's story, thankfully, is not that one. The mushrooms you eat here are grown inside the café itself. The greens arrive not from a cold-storage truck but from hydroponic units on the premises, and what doesn't come from within those walls comes from the founders' own farms in Panipat. This is not farm-to-table as a marketing phrase stuck onto a menu design; it is, as far as I could tell, more or less literally true. The ambition, as I understand it, was never simply to open another vegan café — Delhi has no shortage of those now, some good, many forgettable. It was to make plant-based eating feel like an obvious, uncomplicated choice rather than an act of moral effort. Given how many of my carnivorous friends left Agama making noises of genuine appreciation rather than polite tolerance, I'd say the experiment is working. I should also mention, because I know several readers will want to, that Agama is pet-friendly — which meant I spent a good part of my meal watching Bella, an Indian pariah dog, at the next table behave rather better than most humans do at a nice restaurant. What Arrived at the Table We began, sensibly, with the oyster mushroom skewers — char-grilled, served with a lettuce and an in-house mustard dip that had just enough bite to keep things interesting without overwhelming the delicate, faintly smoky flavour of the mushroom itself. It is a simple dish, but simplicity done well is rarer than restaurants would like you to believe, and this was done very well indeed. Then came the seitan, which I gather Agama is currently the only Delhi restaurant serving — a claim that, if true, is remarkable given how central seitan is to serious plant-based cooking elsewhere in the world. Made from sesame seeds, soy sauce and bell peppers, it delivers close to 70 grams of protein per 100 grams, which is the kind of number that makes gym enthusiasts weep with joy and sceptics of vegan food quietly reconsider their position. More importantly, it had texture — a chewy, almost meaty bite that plant-based cooking so often promises and so rarely delivers. The mushroom cacio e pepe, made with an in-house parmesan, was the dish I found myself thinking about days later. Cacio e pepe is a dish of such reductive simplicity — cheese, pepper, pasta, and precisely nothing to hide behind — that most kitchens get it wrong even with the real thing. That Agama's kitchen managed a version using their own plant-based parmesan and made it taste rich, peppery and properly cheesy, rather than like an apology for cheese, tells you something about the seriousness of what's happening in that kitchen. And then, dessert — a vegan tiramisu, layered with coffee-soaked vegan ladyfingers and a cashew cream that had none of the slightly grainy, "trying its best" quality that plagues most cashew-based creams. It was, quite simply, tiramisu. Not a vegan tiramisu that asks to be graded on a curve. The Bigger Picture Beyond the four dishes I've mentioned, the menu at Agama is considerably more ambitious than a single meal can cover — salads, soups, pizzas, grills, bowls, burgers, wraps, pastas, cakes and baked treats, an all-day brunch menu, a hummus bar, a chaat bar, and yes, a pet menu for the four-legged diners who seem entirely at home here. What struck me most, though, walking out into the M Block afternoon, was not any single dish but the coherence of the whole idea. Agama isn't trying to convert you to veganism through guilt or lecture you about the planet between courses. It simply cooks food that happens to be plant-based, happens to be grown a few feet from where it's served, and happens to taste very good — and lets you draw your own conclusions from there. In a city where "conscious eating" so often means eating less enjoyably, that is no small achievement. I will be back — and not, I should be honest, out of any particular ideological conviction, but because the cacio e pepe deserves a second visit on its own merits. Which, in the end, is precisely the point Agama seems to be making.

Smita

1 month ago

5.0

First of all, the food was awesome, overwhelmed by trying new and unique dishes and the staff was so polite and helpful, highly recommended to try the cafe/restaurant.

dev

3 months ago

5.0

All Vegan food,which was highly affordable & the place is Pet's friendly.A very soothing and relaxing vibe you will find there. Overall a great Place

User

3 months ago

5.0

The ambience was great. The food did not disappoint at all. This was our first time in a vegan, pet friendly cafe and it was an amazing experience.

Jasika

1 month ago

5.0

Loved the idea pf the cafe, being a vegan it is literal gem! And the pizza was sooo good! Gonna bring my friends too!

Satyajit Maity

5 months ago

5.0

Really good vegan menu options. Ordered sweet potato fries, mushroom croquettes, gardenia pizza.. Loved it.

Himanshu kushwaha

6 months ago

5.0

It’s an amazing place and you can enjoy board games there with your loved ones.

Sarthak

6 months ago

4.0

Food was pretty good- we ordered the beetroot and shakarkandi chaat, a pizza and falafel. Most of the drinks were also decent. But the cleanliness was maybe not up to the mark and that can be improved. Rest everything was good.

Harsh Pahade

1 month ago

2.0

Service was poor, we asked for a medium crust pizza and they got us a thin crust one. First they tried to gaslight us saying this is a medium crust pizza, when it was clearly a thin crust. Then they agreed to replace it, but after 10 minutes he brought back the same pizza. The pasta was really good. Didn't enjoy the seitan at all. Beetroot hummus was unnecessarily sweet. Okay food, would not visit again.

Rahul Garg

2 months ago

1.0

We ordered pesto with lentils pasta. Overall, taste was Okayish. The major concern was that they have put in a lot of oil in it.