Karakoram Restaurant — Restaurant in Vancouver

Please read before you give this place a go : So we 4 people went there for dining in and ordered a family platter, something called mutton karahi and 2 nihari as extra . To my surprise, the mutton karahi came in all grounded meat !! Not to mention the portion which nowhere looked like a platter, not even accompanied with salad. I was expecting at least some curry cuts but it was just some ground meats with dripping oil. Nihari was just ‘meh’. The server looked irritated while taking order and was so in rush to even let us decide. About the ambience? It was simply dim, too dark to even take photos. Zero value for the price. Way too pricey for some below average foods and tastes. At last, we wanted to have some desserts (gulab jamun)to taste some sweetness. The server came with 3 extremely hot gulab jamun in one tray . (no caution was given so I almost burnt my tongue). The server said “so you ordered hot gulab jamun, what could we do”. Honey, we just ordered gulab jamun, little did we know it would be that hot. A friendly warning could’ve helped…nevermind . No separate small bowls were served, no forks. They need to get educated on cutlery. Never going back again. Not recommended. Total wastage of our God-damned $130.

Edit : Dear owner, thanks for replying. Honestly, I can’t remember having “keema” on that mutton karahi and even if we accidentally did order that, it’s because your waitress was so in hurry and we might’ve ended up ordering something that we didn’t want at all . So sorry, we’re not gonna take this blame on us. We told her twice to allow us a few minutes as we went as a family and had to spend a big amount on a single meal so obviously we wanted to take a moment and make sure we ordered something we would love to have for dinner as well as which would be worth our hard earned money. And when customers say they need some minutes to decide, you don’t go back to their table right after a few sec / min to take order and ask “ do you need some moreee time”? Apparently, we had to say we were ready although we were not , otherwise it would be like we were killing her time. As for the second nihari, yes we just had to order it to keep us full due to the mutton karahi being too small for us , though your server said it was enough for 3 people. Not that we hated or loved the nihari….it was just unexceptional, average and that’s what i meant by ‘meh’. Also, instead of pointing out customers fault, you better train your waitress properly and tell her not to frequently go to customers table until they are fully ready, politely raise their hands and indicate her to come over by themselves . And this is coming from a former waitress who used to work in a five star Greek restaurant somewhere in Europe ( pls note that European are the ones who taught proper dining etiquettes to the whole world). Also, you don’t just leave the plates and cutlery on the table. You hold them on one hand and serve one by one to the customers from left side to all the way to the end . My two cents….invest some time and energy on training your servers and also tell your chef to save some cooking oil as a lot of other customers are complaining about it too. Good luck with...

I made an online order at 530pm for 615pm pick up. Two items were not available so I was called to choose another item. We replaced lamb shank for lamb kebob because of the similar price, which turned out to be two measly lamb kebobs for $22 (see EDIT below)! See attached picture.

I arrived at 610pm and was told the food was delayed and I finally received it at 650pm. Upon arriving home, I was missing a few items from the order (rice and samosas). I called to ask for a refund and was told to come back next time to eat and they will serve us those items. That was an unusual response, so we insisted on being refunded.

Overall, terrible experience and very poorly communicated throughout the process. No comment on the food cause we threw it out as we cannot accept eating from this restaurant.

EDIT 2022-08-26: Per the response by the owner, they did reach out to process a refund for the missed items, and also for miscommunicating the price of the replacement item (lamb kebobs for lamb shank). I was asked to remove this review, but given that the experience was indeed unacceptable to me, I am keeping this review but have added another star as the owner did acknowledge and try to rectify the situation through a refund. In fact, he offered to refund the full meal. However I am not leaving a negative review to get a free meal, so I refused. Another reason I'm not removing the this review is that every mistake along the way could have been mitigated:

1. Not having items available and contacting me to have it changed is totally understandable. Being told that the replacement item (lamb kebob) is the same price as the unavailable item (lamb shank) may have been an honest mistake, but feels to me it was just a rushed response to quickly find a replacement.
2. Having to wait 30 minutes longer the than the expected time seems like they missed our order entirely (even though they contacted me earlier to change the unavailable items). This could have been communicated clearer, instead of telling me "it's coming". If I had known the wait was 30 minutes, I would have cancelled the order and got my dinner elsewhere (and no negative review!).
3. Given that I had already wait so long, it would have been reasonable to check to make sure that all the ordered items are packed. Instead, I returned home to missing samosas and rice.
4. When calling back to ask about the missing items, I was told that "naan usually comes with curry", though it was clearly indicated on both the order and receipt that I had ordered rice instead of naan. Again, seems like a rushed response to placate me.

I can see that all the above mistakes could have been caused by them being understaffed. Perhaps they could have refused my order in the first place and all this could have...

December 2019 edit: It looks like the vegan options didn't really pan out as previously promised. My only option was the chana daal, as the other dishes were either not available or not vegan. I'm generally not excited about lentils, but this dish was pretty good and had a unique taste.

There was one waitress serving three tables. Unlike our server in 2018, she wasn't familiar with which items were vegan, and forgot to check with the kitchen for me. She also went missing or got sidetracked when we wanted plates for sharing, water, etc. We ended up getting our own plates and cutlery, but didn't have access to water to serve ourselves, and the water ran out pretty quickly between the nine of us. Our waitress was apologetic about the lack of service.

The orders also took a while to come out, but this is apparently because everything is made fresh to order. Wasn't an issue for me, but some of my group were starving and not too happy about all the waiting.

I'm disappointed that the options became even more limited than my first experience here. I thought it would be easy to make vegan options by skipping or substituting ingredients like ghee if everything is made to order.

One of our appetizer orders never made it to the table, and we didn't get the type of naan we ordered, but it wasn't a huge deal...

If you're not in a rush, hanging out with a group for a few hours and aren't vegan this place is probably fine. Since the chana daal was pretty good overall, I'm still giving this place a 3/5 instead of a lower score, but it's not the 5/5 it was for me before.

August 2018 review: I came here with some friends shortly before the grand (re-)opening on August 31st. At the time there were a couple of vegan options, and since they had run out of the one I wanted, I ended up ordering a falafel platter instead. The waiter knew the menu well and helped me figured out what was vegan, modifying dips as necessary. The owners(?) were very apologetic about the lack of options, insisting that my meal was free and told me there were plans to expand vegan options...