From the outside, Lazeez looks like any other Indian or Middle Eastern restaurant you might find along the backstreets of Hamdan Street. On the inside, however, you will find yourself treated to divine Mughal cuisine and service so excellent, you may feel as though you have been mistaken for a raj.
We enter feeling nothing short of royalty, as we are ushered in with the bowing and sweeping of arms in regal attire – all four of them – struggling each to better attend to us.
The interior is garish. The pink and gold walls, bright paintings, gold upholstery, booths with curtains and sparkly chandeliers create a whirling visual kaleidoscope which almost rival the animus of the service staff.
Upstairs there is a dark and large space with small, majlis-style rooms replete with cushions and colourful mattresses, which allow parties to dine in privacy.
An animated server in a tie and red coat shows up and hands us several menus. The main menu is extensive – a whopping twenty five pages. We don’t know where to start. There is a selection of twenty-eight different biryanis and immediately vote we opt to at least one of them, so we choose an Eid special which Organic quinoa and Fish Biryani which sounds divine, and the server tells us will be more than enough for the two of us.
We opt for the aloo makai tikki, or battered and fried sweet corn and potato croquettes served with myriad sauces and the mahi tikka achari, which is labelled a ‘Lazeez signature dish’ and is described as a fillet of hammour marinated in lime, yoghurt and mashed pickle and grilled to perfection.
We are served pappadum and a variety of dips to enjoy them with. The lime pickle is not for everyone, but every diner should at least try it. It is at once bitter than sour and, despite that, we like it. It’s a fine condiment to go with all manner of different Indian dinner. There is also a mint raita and a tamarind chutney for those who prefer a more conventional condiment.
Our food arrives and takes our minds off the lime pickle. The aloo Makai tikki are divided between us and, despite my companion attempting to opt out, the server nearly lose his turban at the thought of us not sampling something that has been prepared for us.
He places the croquettes on our side plates neatly with an array of sauces placed on top sequentially. They are tasty and there was rhyme to the server’s reasoning of layering the sauces. With each bite, we taste something very different, once sweet and the sour
and creamy. The sauces are far more interesting than the patties of corn and potato.
The server then does the same for the Mahi tikka achari, which upon scent alone are immediately pronounced the starter winner. Plumes of subtle turmeric and lime steam rise from the morsels of fish, which as so delicate, chewing is optional as they effectively melt in your mouth like butter. We lap up each bite and wish we had ordered two.
The main is swiftly brought to our table after a small team cleans up after our starters, removing every trace of mess we may have made. It makes us feel as though we had been quite messy, but, in fact, this is the custom.
The enormous biryani is presented in a traditional earthen pot. The server breaks the sealed by the puffed-out pastry dome, and a plume of fragrant steam escapes. Everything tastes as good as it smells. The server shyly doles out small portions of the fragrant organic quinoa and digs around for succulent slices of fish, which also tastes as though it’s hammour. The fish is perfectly steamed and the quinoa has a nuanced spiced tinge that is utterly divine.
Despite the tome of a menu, it is oddly lacking in desserts. There are only two and neither especially calls out to us. The steaming cups of chai masala tempt us, but it’s late, so we decline.
We could have ordered many more items on the menu; it was so hard to choose, but we used restraint, ordering only a few select dishes and feel lighter for it. We leave with a sense that we have just enjoyed a particularly good meal in the unlikeliest of settings.
The bill (for two)
Aloo Makai Tikki Dhs16
Mahi Tikka Achari Dhs44
Organic Fish Biryani Dhs73
Total (excl. service) Dhs133
