Lahore Karahi by Alhamra — Restaurant in San Francisco

Bringing shame to Lahore. This is all I can say. Lahore is a city known for its cuisine. This place is an embarrassment. I ordered Tandoori Chicken, Daal Tarka, Naan and Raita.

I can understand that being in SFO, these guys need to tweak the flavors, make the dishes milder and add more Red coloring to everything. But God. The Chicken was Red, like dipped in nothing but the food coloring, bland as if these guys could not afford to put some salt in the marinade, dry as bone. If you claim to be from Lahore, and cant even handle a chicken in tandoor, you wont last long in the business.

Moving on. The Daal Tarka was runniest dish I have ever come across in my life. Now, I have been to road-side restaurants in Lahore and Cabbie places serving cheap food in NYC. Their Daal has consistency of a soup bought from a cheap chinese place. Bland, taste less and extremely unappetizing.

Raita, same story as Daal. A spoon of yogurt, mixed with a litre of water. One look and I was angry at my own self for ordering from here.

Let come to the last jewel that I had ordered. Naan. Now, who can screw up a thing as simple as Naan. Right ? They make hundreds of them a day. But no sir. I ordered a garlic naan. It came smothered with Tumeric and Cilantro. Someone please tell them, Garlic Naan does not require a lot of effort. Some Butter, Egg wash and garlic. Done !

As someone else wrote that they had ordered Karahi, since the restaurant name has "Karahi" in it. I can not imagine that they will be able to even fry an egg correctly, let alone make a Karahi. These guys, if asked to open up a lemonade stand will...

I had been craving Indian food so I thought just as long as I had butter chicken or chicken tikka masala, I'd be good. Sadly I left this place feeling unsatisfied and a bit annoyed.

It's a small place and always crowded, so be prepared to wait. You're not going to just be waiting for a seat, but you're going to be waiting for your food also. My friends and I came super hungry and it took an hour to get our food. Not sure if it's because they didn't put in our order, but the fact that they only have one cook (and one guy making the naan) probably didn't help matters. They also got our order wrong but since we were so hungry, we didn't care and just took whatever dish they made us.

The butter chicken was easily the favorite dish amongst our table. Garlic Naan was pretty tasty. I think the other two dishes we got were vegetarian, the Galoo Gobhi (cauliflower and potato) and Aloo Bengan (eggplant and potato). They were both bleh to me. Might be because I'm a carnivore and I'm not happy unless there's meat. Everything was spicy too. Two of my friends were dying.

In the end, I wasn't very impressed. There's better Indian food around where you don't have to wait around forever...

My family went there today for lunch. We ordered butter chicken, garlic naan, plain rice and chicken tandoori boti. First of all I would appreciate if the person who is taking the order and serving food should should have their mask on at all times. My kids are not yet vaccinated yet. The guy had his mask on his chin instead of covering his face. Knowing there is a pandemic going on AND kids have not received the vaccine, he should've covered up. I don't want someone unmasked breathing down on my food during a pandemic!

The chicken in the Butter Chicken was undercooked! I couldn't break it with my naan. Even with the fork and spoon it was hard to break. The gravy didn't seem fresh either.

The garlic naan was cold and dry. The middle was crunchy and breakable like papadam.

The tandoori chicken boti should've been more tender but wasn't. Compared to the butter chicken, it was breakable using a fork.

Giving 2 starts for a surprisingly clean bathroom.

My Google history showed we visited this restaurant 4 years ago. Now I know why we skipped it all...