Food Review: Kakori House

Kakori House is a restaurant chain that claims to have the secret recipe of the kakori kebab, which was prepared for a royal who lost his teeth while playing a sport. Such was his craving for meat, that his cooks invented a recipe for kebabs so soft that the ruler would be able to enjoy meat without having to wear dentures, which probably hadn’t been invented then. You know whose mom necessity is.

So we go straight for the kakori kebabs, which turn out to be the softest kababs (it reads better spelled this way) ever. So delicate and tasty that you don’t want to have them with the green chutney that has jeera in it. It is impossible to chew them – they can’t even be lifted off the plate as whole pieces. The mutton galawati kebabs are round and they taste exactly like the kakori kebabs, but all this special stuff is overpriced or too little in quantity, depending on how you choose to see it.

Next up is lagan ki boti – boneless mutton pieces in a curry which isn’t really there. The taste of the spices used here will stay with you till the end of the day and perhaps make you go back to Kakori House to try the other Awadhi dishes. It was a mistake having this almost-dry dish with roomali rotis. The haleem and warqi parathas look very nice but there is nothing about the haleem (mutton paste) which makes it stand out. Warqi parathas are cooked on an ulta tava and are thin and yellow. Maybe all this authentic lucknowi food would taste a lot better in Lucknow.

The dum gosht lucknowi biryani, which the manager claims everyone comes to Kakori House for, sucks. It is completely dry and devoid of flavour. There are about four mutton pieces in it, but neither that nor the unexciting raita can make up for the boring biryani. The manager then comes back and tells us everything on the menu is made from secret recipes that are known only to the owner and his wife. They should make sure the biryani recipe remains a secret.

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