Samarkand serves ’’Frontier’’, i.e. food from Northern Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan. It’s named after a station out there, and was once on the Silk Route. Well well well, I am no history buff, but the ’’almanac’’ style 1 sheet newspaper-of-a-menu you get at the restaurant says all that.
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Let’s start with getting there. If you can reach Safina Plaza, you can walk another 20 steps and reach Samarkand. Parking is available, but Valet parking. If it happens to be a Friday night, even Valet parking seems insufficient.
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The entrance is nothing grand. Entering the door you get the feel of entering a ’’gufaa’’ (a cave), lit with ’’mashals’’ (torches). The inside is not too well lit. Rather kind-of dark. When I visited, the smoker’s section seemed to seat some grass-smoking dudes (well could be Cuban cigars too). Smoke seemed to hang over their heads. Frankly, being a non-smoker, I didn’t feel too great being there. Eventually all our guests (& the host, i.e. my manager) arrived. They give you orange-aprons with ’’SAMARKAND’’ written on it. My firangi-friends had a gala-time snapping lots of photographs with those aprons, but I was too embarassed to put ’em on (well w/o drinks, it’s kinda hard!). The seating is supposed to be ’’desi’’ style, but turned out to be more like japanese ’’sushi’’ bar type seating. the seats had kind of wells in front, to rest the foot, and for a person standing beside you, it appears that you are almost, sitting-on-the-floor (I guess that’s what they wanted to do anyway!).
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The order was quickly taken, and some good sizzlers landed up fairly quickly. I went for a mocktail, and it turned out to be quite good. The sizzlers were really yummy. I am a veggi, so I stuck to the paneer tikka, gobhi tikka, veggi kabab, but for the others their stuff was really good. Our guest were ’’spice-freaked’’ French, but they too were ga-ga over the starters. For the main course we ordered some stuff whose names I cannot remember. It was some kind of a biriyani which is cooked in small individual handi’s whose mouth is sealed with a naan! My veggi side dishes were quite good, but naan’s were just about average. The last course comprised of desserts (well with French guests, this is not obvious, I am told!). I ordered some kulfi, which was damn-too-sweet for me, but until 1/3rd (i.e. when the sweet really started hitting me hard), it was quite good.
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Then came the bill. With just 1 bottle of apna regular ’’Grover’s wine’’, 3 mocktails, 3 sizzlers, 3 biriyani’s, 4 subzi/daal, few naan’s, for total of 6 guests, our bill ran up to 6500/- (incl. tip). Well, now that was a hard-hitter. But as long as my boss (rather the company) is paying, who minds.
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Summary: It’s a decent place, tad overpriced (as per my boss), but really overpriced as per my standards, but food is quite good. BTW, this is one place, I’d not like to take my 2 yr old son. My son hates dark(/-ish) places and I hate the cigar smoke.