Date: 17th September, 2015
Venue: Singh Sahib, Eros Hotel, Nehru Place

Every now and then we find ourselves asking the waiter what has he served to our neighbouring table. For some reason the food at neighboring table always looks more enticing. So when we got an opportunity to taste food from our closest neighbours – Pakistan, we just couldn’t resist.

A zomato meetup invite for Pakistan food festival  Daawat-e-Maghrib at Singh Saheb, Hotel Eros enabled us to taste authentic cuisine from Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Lahore and Multan. Curated by celebrity chef Gulzar Hussain and Naseem from Pakistan, the cuisine had a melange of veg and non veg delicacies.

Live Musician at Singh Sahib performed old hindi film numbers

Starters comprised of Lahori fish fry, lotus stem fritters (Bhain ke pakode), malai mushrooms, veg shami kebabs etc. We loved the fish fries and lotus stem fritters were awesome. The inherent sweetness of lotus stem coupled with crunchiness of thin wafer style frying made it outstanding. Along with the starters we had pisteywali lassi. Quite different from any other lassi we ever had, this had best features of both salt and sweet lassi in one drink.

From main course buffet we had Aaloo palak saag, Paneer magrabi qorma, achari subz and karari bhindi etc. We had these with zafrani pulao which was fragrant plain rice. All the dishes were quite like their Indian counterparts but still different in some way. Just like how a neighbor’s food taste different even if they use the same ingredients.

From desserts we tried pethey ka halwa, sakorey wali phirni and lab-e-Shirin. Desserts could be a little better. Though they were well made we couldn’t find anything unique about them.

All in all, it was a great gourmet experience and we give the chef and his team brownie points for not using a lot of mirch-masala and keeping food simple and taste subtle.

Chef Gulzar Hussain along with team Zomato, folks at Eros Hotel and invited food bloggers.

People who dig purani dilli style mughlai food must try this food festival.