Pleasure the palate with Pakistani cuisine at Cinnamon Grand

By Cassandra Mascarenhas

Colourful, rich draperies adorning the entrance catch your eye and the aromatic smell of a wide assortment of exotic spices and herbs lining the walkway waft through your nostrils as one walks into the Cinnamon Grand’s Courtyard these days.

A part of the World Spice Festival that is currently underway in Colombo, the hotel is celebrating the very best of authentic Pakistani cuisine, with Chef Amir Khan at the helm of the preparation of this culinary feast.

Chef Khan said he is excited by this year’s festival, considering the riveting response received last year and all the support he got from the Cinnamon Grand and its staff. He said, “Cinnamon Grand understands my people, my food and my culture and I am thrilled to be back to promote and share the very best of my cuisine.”

The master chef has spent years travelling through the most rural of regions, across Peshawar, Lahore, Karachi and Gujarat learning the intricacies of the varied cooking styles, so as to perfect Pakistani in its most wholesome sense.  This year’s food festival is therefore a showcase of the most traditional of Pakistani fare, with the most authentic ingredients. “It’s real Pakistani food, with real Pakistani taste,” Khan added.

That it was, sampling dishes from the Pakistani districts of Kashmir, Balochistan, Punjab and Sindh amongst others. The buffet commences with a series of vegetable salads, which looked fresh and zesty but were sadly mostly ignored by me, along with most of the vegetarian dishes, of which there were many.

Four action stations on the patio outside churned out more goodies. One made live charcoal BBQ skewers, including chicken and mutton seekh kebabs, kasori and beef bhawali boti, chicken and mutton khoya kebabs and multani fish tikka. While they can all be eaten as it is, an accompanying sauce with some of them, especially the mutton seekh kebab, really brings out the flavour.

The Pakistani spice marinated whole leg of lamb is also a must try, with tons of lean meat and tasty fatty portions, with which the chef happily loaded my plate. If looking for some fiery spice, head over to the next action station and sample the mutton high flame masala curry – tender mutton swimming in delicious, spicy gravy. Best make a stop at the table loaded with rotis, naans and chapatis and stock up your plate to mop up all that curry.

Back inside are the rice dishes – three types of biryani – mutton, chicken and vegetable, each prepared differently with careful selections of Pakistani spices. It was surprisingly not oily and somewhat dry, which soaked up the accompanying curries well.

The main courses included chicken Karahi, Lahori Tawa fish cooked with ground chickpea powder, Rajasthani mutton korma flavoured with garam masala, mint and crushed black pepper, Lahori fried fish served with plum sauce, raita and mint chutney (the plum sauce was delicious, feel free to mix it in with other dishes as well), and prawns cooked with onion and coconut curry sauce.

Vegetable dishes comprised of ladies fingers cooked in thick gravy, baked eggplant cooked in masala, red kidney beans cooked in Punjabi spice masala and split Bengal gram cooked in Punjabi Lahore special spices and layered with egg.

The chicken shawarma too deserves a special mention – thick strips of barbecued chicken soaked in sauces and wrapped in crisp, well-buttered roti.

After a breather, I waddled over to the dessert table, and while the lack of chocolate in South East Asian cuisine generally upsets me somewhat, the selection of sweet, milky treats generously mixed with a variety of nuts and fruits proved to be the ideal end to the meal.

However, even with all this food, it was the lamb and mutton dishes that really stood out. Tender and well-marinated, some were kept simple, bringing out the true flavour of the meats, while others were infused with an inspired selection of chillies and tangy sauces – and they were all scrumptious.

“The response has been great so far,” stated Manager Ashoka Chandanathilaka, and this comes as no surprise. Although the food, which consisted of various meats, biryani, shawarmas and a range of chapatis and rotis may seem like standard fare to Sri Lankans, there was a marked difference in the preparation of each dish, with the infusion of spices and accompanying chutneys and sauces making a world of a difference.  

This includes over 100 kg of hand-picked carefully carried, hard to find herbs and spices from the labyrinths of nether Pakistan and its regions, personally procured by the Chef during his quest to explore shades of Pakistani flavours. “An understanding of flavours is key,” he stated.

While the cuisine was the undeniable highlight of the evening, the excellent service from the waiters, who were clad in flowing white garb complete with sequined waistcoats, certainly made the evening a memorable one, especially our own courteous waiter who efficiently saw to our every need and plied us with dish after dish of delectable morsels.

The promotion will be on until 14 October at the Cinnamon Grand’s Courtyard Restaurant, priced at Rs. 1,950 plus taxes.