What does Samarkand mean: It is name of a city in Ujbekistan, inhabited since 700bc(Courtesy: Wikipedia)
Location: Excellent location. Very close to Safina Plaza.
Parking: Can’t recall seeing any. I had parked my car infront of Safina Plaza, so did not bother to find if these guys have any parking facility.
Cuisine: North west frontier cuisine
Wait time: I went there over a weekend afternoon. I was surprised to see there was no crowd and no waiting time at all. I was definitely surprised.
Staff/ambience: The staff welcomes you pretty well and takes you to a table. The ambience is good but the seating is not. The tables are rather low and if you are a tall guy, you will have tough time. The restaurant is designed to give you a feeling of NW frontier area. All the service staff wear dresses like Pathans. However none of them are real pathans. Some of them speak English with a heavy UP/Bihari accent. Once you are seated, you will be greeted with some starters.
Menu: If a waiter places a bottle on your table, don’t be surprised. This is not an inhouse complementary drink, but the drinks menu itself. Also, don’t be surprised if you are handed something that looks like a news paper from some Arab country. That actually is the food menu. I happened to visit on a dry day, so no alcoholic drinks were allowed. Otherwise also, I wouldn’t have ordered any looking at the price. One thing that strikes you in the menu is that the nonveg has a good spread compared to veg varieties. One more thing you will notice is, the items are all fairly costly.
For a restaurant that takes pride in being one of the few to servenorth west frontier cuisine, the number of dishes prepared with lambseems to be less.
Food qauality/quantity: When I placed order for 4 tandoor roties, the waiter said 4 can’t be eaten by two people(myself and my wife). He asked me to consider ordering less. So, I ordered 3 rotis and later I realized that in no way is sufficient. These tandoori rotis are no bigger than normal rotis you get at any other north Indian hotels. Looking at the high prices, if you had expectation that quantity will be more, you will be disappointed. As for quality, it is very good. No second word on that.
Price: A normal tandoor roti costs you 50Rs and a Changezi naan costs190Rs.Biriyani costs 350+ Rs and any veg/nonveg curry will cost you 250Rsonwards. A 10% service charge is included in the bill. A VAT of 12.5%is added on food+ service charge. A meal with soup/starters/maincourse/desserts for two will easily cost close to 2000Rs. Thatsdefinitely costly.
Overall, a nice place to eat some good food, if your wallet is big enough.