Lasani Karahi — Restaurant in Birmingham

Always walked past this place before the refurb, tried it once back then, it was really amazingly great value. To be reformed to a restaurant style shop now, we had to try it.

Decor at the back (main seating area) is great, nicely done, some may say a tad dark, but I found it plentiful in terms of light (moreso at the table itself). New seating (see my pictures) very nice and comfortable booth styled seating, material was suede like.

They have toilets available, one for men and one for women, was clean at the time of my visit (hopefully that's how it always is).

We ordered the smashed burgers and of course being me, had to go for the largest 12 oz smashed burger. The burger was pleasantly better than expected, however, one thing I will say is it's more of a meat lovers burger, in the sense it has natural meat flavours (I for one didn't mind that) but for some it may be you want more flavour/salt but with condiments I don't think that would be the case for most. Overall I would order this again, nice looking burger too.

Also ordered a Lamb Karahi, it was decent, a bit light in colour to what I'm used to, also wasn't as strong in the flavour as some other Lamb Karahis I have tried. Probably would try a different curry next time, but the burger was definitely worth it and reasonably priced at under £10 for a meal.

They also take card payments which is great to see.

Only reason for 3 stars is the service was a bit disorganised and the Lamb Karahi which is highly hyped on the menu didn't live up...

I went with my friends yesterday and had to wait half an hour to be seated which was fine. But when we got to our table it was still messy and they kept moving us to different tables which was quite annoying. When we finally got to out table we sat down for 20 minutes waiting for our order to be taken and when it was finally taken most of the food was out off stock. The guy with the big goatee and side burns was verry rude to us and tried to speak in urdu to us when we told him we can not understand him he also kept arguing with the other waiters which alerted other customers. When the food finally arrived after half an hour we started eating, the food was not that bad my friends enjoyed the smash burgers but 5 minutes into eating the guy came back to our table trying to speak to us in urdu again, trying to tell us to hurry up and eat we have customers waiting. My friends grilled chicken wrap was extremely dry and burnt, it was hard to swallow it, so we tried sending it back and when the waiter returned they responded "its supposed to be like that" then gave him his food back, my other friend got a butter chicken khari and when he took a bite of the chicken it was pink in the middle!!! Im posting this the next day and i just called my friend which he just told me he has food poisoning now. As a chef myself I would not recommend this...

This outlet is like West Ham in the Premier League in terms of its food. It has its good moments interspersed with its bad. For example, the mixed grill. The seekh kebab was juicy and tender but the charga chicken was ordinary tasting lacking the flavour drive. It’s like the seekh kebab is Antonio on fire with the charga being Matt Dawson.

If we extrapolate these two examples to the karahis, you’ll find the same issue. The lamb karahi was probably Bowen. It had drive, tender, well cooked & tasty. The achari chicken was underwhelming. It had a weird flavour that can’t be easily articulated in words.

The chips were like Mark Noble. It had a standard but like the ageing noble’s performances, the chips were cold.

Mango lassi had a slight aftertaste.

The service was like the managerial career of David Moyes. It was solid, i.e. timely and efficient, but with the occasional tactical error, like having no coke.

As with West Ham, where people might come to watch them again, the same applies to this restaurant. It’s not in top 4 restaurants in Birmingham, but we wouldn’t mind coming back again a few months...