You could be forgiven for thinking Lilt is a bomb shelter, because of the solid steel girders that reinforce its bright red facade, and the not one, but two 8-inch thick doors blocking its entrance. You’d also be forgiven for thinking it’s a club, because of its flashy exterior, large dance floor, and DJ containment area. However, when you look past its cavernous main dining area and sprawling bar, Lilt is just another Chinese restaurant with extreme delusions of being a “Modern Asian Bar Room”
Because we’re a reputable, Christian organisation that would never associate ourselves with a club unless they gave us money, we tried interrogating our waiter about Lilt’s true nature. It turns out LILT isn’t a club, it just looks, acts, and feels like one. Because Derrick the Intern still can’t shut the fuck up about us being journalists, the staff at LILT put us up in an exclusive, isolated section of the restaurant, right below a suspiciously creaky wooden beam that was propping up the entire 100-year-old building.
LILT has an impressive bar, complete with rotating shelves that make it substantially harder for the bartender to put things down. The stage at the far end of the restaurant makes a good platform for live musical performances, but considering the times we live in, it’ll probably be used by B-list comedians to film their D-list YouTube specials. There’s also a pool table that’s free to play, but we wouldn’t recommend it because it took us forty-five minutes to finish one single frame, something we attribute to the inferior quality of the table, and not the fact that we haven’t played pool since FYJC.
Spicy Mozzarella Beef Dumpling
Of the vast selection of starters we tried, three truly stood out. The first, and by far the most memorable was the Spicy Mozzarella Beef Dumpling, which despite having the exact divine taste and consistency of beef, was apparently buffalo.
Citrus And Ginger Marinated Salmon
Then there was the Citrus And Ginger Marinated Salmon, a single dish that conclusively proves that capitalism is the greatest economic system on God’s green earth. Seriously, if there ever was process that allowed for fresh, delicious salmon to be delivered from the Canadian wilderness to India in under 24 hours, it sure as hell isn’t being overseen by a bunch of fucking commies. We’ve never not been repulsed by fish skin, but the salmon was extremely fresh, and at the risk of sounding like a serial killer, our favourite part was its crispy skin.
Kashmiri Chilli Chicken
And finally, we have the Kashmiri Chilli Chicken. Not only did eating it make us feel patriotic for doing our bit to resolve Indo-Pakistani relations, it was also one of the most flavourful things we’d ever consumed. Was it just really good chilli chicken? Maybe. But as drunks, we’re as low maintenance as they come, so we’re not complaining.
Fried Leaves
We also tried a Jain dish as part of our outreach to the Jain community; in the form of deep fried leaves. Normally, we would eat our house keys if they were properly deep fried, but this was just sad. But hey, at least nothing died in the making of this dish. Nothing but our sense of civility towards Jain people.
Cocktails
Of the numerous, and we do mean numerous, amount of drinks we had that day, all of which were between good and brilliant, memories of two survived our inevitable blackouts. The Aviation Sour which is a manly, gin based drink once you ignore the cherry and flower, and the Old Fashioned, the classic whiskey based cocktail so hardcore, it literally smokes.
The Decree
While we think Lilt is sort of struggling with its identity as a ‘Modern Asian Bar Room’, we don’t blame them for positioning themselves that way. It’s more catchy than them calling themselves ‘another pub in Kamala mills’, which is basically what it is. That being said, we had a great time at Lilt. The dishes were made from top notch ingredients, and were reasonably well executed. And the cocktails were as delicious and intoxicating as they were pretty. It may be a closeted club, but in our opinion it’s an institution worth anyone’s patronage. So would we ever go there again? Yes, and when the bombs drop, there’s no place else we’d rather be.
