I’ve been visiting Samarkand for about 7 yrs now, both as a vegetarian and a non-veggie.
I must say that I’m so much in love with the place that if I could get genuinely offended if someone gives a rating of 4 to Samarkand! It is perfection beyond words. Its not merely a restaurant! Its a heritage and a legend befitting its name.
The best thing here is the food- almost everything on the menu is worth a mention! Their specialty is all mutton, chicken and paneer dishes- more or less in that order. Dishes deserving special mention are mutton shorba, mutton dum biryani, til dil murg tikka(or something like that), chicken peshawari and the paneer tikka. What really wins your heart are the complementary add ons- soup sticks with mayo, assortment of chutneys, papaya murabba, the raita with the biryani, etc:)
The service had dipped a bit in the past, but it is very hospitable and prompt now(went there just yesterday). A welcome addition is the scented wet towels they provide to give a refreshing start to the meal. The best part- they provide wonderful parking assistance and if it happens to be raining, u don’t need to even hail the valet before he comes running to you with a big BJN group umbrella! They solicit verbal and written feedback while you are at your meal and are very forthcoming in serving the dishes, making sure you never need to serve even a morsel yourself. The water gets refilled without you noticing and the plates are changed as many times as you like.
A standard meal of shorba, starters and main course will cost around 600-700 per head but its totally worth every penny! Hope this place never ever changes even a bit!