Daily Times

Not a single restaurant or café has lagged behind this Ramadan in coming up with sehri and iftari deals and as it turns out, most of these are quite similar in taste, presentation, variety and price. From a plethora of these eateries that I tried out, here I review Urban Kitchen for all those fasting in the remaining days of Ramadan.

STRENGTHS — take a bow Team Urban Kitchen for serving the best eggs Benedict in town. Not that many offer this American delicacy in Lahore. Priced at Rs 895, the dish is served with a helping of freshly-baked English muffins, each of which is topped with poached eggs, beef bacon, mushrooms, spinach, cheese and topped with Hollandaise sauce. Hash browns and grilled tomatoes are served alongside. The flavour and taste is truly distinct and will definitely make you want to come back for more. The eggs are soft and runny, the vegetables are fresh and the beef bacon and hash browns with cheese simply melt in your mouth. Just writing about it is making me salivate.

The Mushroom & Cheese Omelette platter is priced at Rs 695. All restaurants are offering this so there is no different element to that but what I particularly liked about Urban Kitchen’s omelette was the generous amount of cheese put in, with a normal spice quotient. The omelette was huge and you really don’t need to have anything else after that. Of course, it was served with hash browns and grilled tomatoes.

In my bid to try out their desi platter, I ordered their Nawabon Ki Thali which was priced at Rs 995. It was humongous and has butter chicken, makhni daal, beef dum keema and aalu ki bhujia with paratha. I wouldn’t say I liked all the items in the platter but the beef dum keema was so splendidly cooked that for a moment I forgot I stopped eating beef years ago. I mixed it up with my omelette and created a new dish for myself very proudly and unashamedly.

On the attendant’s recommendation, I tried Chapshoro, priced at Rs 750. It’s a classic Hunzai dish, sandwiched between two pieces of homemade flatbread that’s grilled on top of the stove and served with mint chutney. I believe Urban Kitchen is the first to be offering something as unique and distinct and for Lahoris to be exposed to a delicacy like that is a big win for the restaurant.

The food does take time to arrive, but once it does, you know that the food is fresh and not microwaved.

WEAKNESSES — I would like to point out the bitter tasting Mint Margarita, the extremely dark in colour daal makhni and the very dry Chocolate Lotus Pancakes.