Samarkand is a Pakistani restaurant with a confusing name. A week after visiting them for breakfast, I’m still trying to figure out why they named their restaurant after the second largest city in Uzbekistan.
The interior of Samarkand is even more like Ravi’s of Satwa than the Green Lagoon around the corner. It’s slightly bigger too. But it’s (relatively) clean; the tabletops are wiped after each customer, and the floor looked recently swept. That said, one of the servers smelt like he needed to be thrown into an industrial washing machine to be washed with his clothes. Thankfully he was quickly replaced with an attentive, friendly waiter who, most importantly, did not have us holding our breath every time he came to the table. We nicknamed him “Blueyes”, because of his…um, blue eyes.
We ordered Keema and Brain Masala, both of which were served (in typical Pakistani fashion) in the individual karahi they were cooked in.
We also ordered Haleem, Channa and Paya, with a couple of Parathas to eat them with. Everything was simply superb, the Paya especially so. A word of advice if you are diabetic, make sure you mention you do not want sugar in your tea or coffee.
Stinky Pete aside, service was surprisingly good. In addition to being friendly, our waiter got food to our table in no time, and repeatedly checked to see how we were doing throughout our meal. So, keeping aside the unusual choice of name, Samarkand is one of the better options in the Barsha-1 area to sample some very good Pakistani food, breakfast in particular.
Waste NOT. Want NOT.
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