Punjabi Dhaba

As according to wikipedia, Punjabi Dhaba literally means a restaurant owned by a Punjabi from the Punjab region in either India or Pakistan.

In Auckland, Punjabi Dhaba is another place for Indian cuisine. In my opinion, this restaurant serves better food as compared to Raviz.

I had been to Punjabi Dhaba restaurant a few times, and always forgotten to bring a camera to shoot all the food photos from this restaurant. Thanks to my partner, this time he reminded me to bring the camera during our recent visit there for a birthday celebrations.

As this is an Indian cuisine restaurant, it provides a brass made forks and knives, and all most of the food are also being served in brass thali (plates).

Since this was a birthday celebrations, there were a total of 6 adults and 2 children for that day. Hence we were able to order a little more. However, Indian cuisine is always very rich and creamy. Therefore, it's good that we didn't over ordered it too.

To kick start the dinner, we had two entrees, which were the mixed pakura and samosa. Mixed pakura is made of assorted vegetables dipped in pea flour batter, deliciously spiced and fried to golden brown. As for samosa, it is a triangular pastry filled with seasoned potatoes, deep fried until golden brown. Both the entrees were served with sweet tamarind sauce which paired it really well.

Chicken tandoori is always a must to order whenever we were there. It is made of tender spring chicken marinated in yogurt, spices and gently roasted over charcoal. This dish is always being served with mint chutney which enhanced the flavour of the chicken.

Dhaba beef curry, beef cooked with authentic and traditional Dhaba style curry, was another main that we had ordered as it was requested by the birthday lady.

Next, is the lamb tak-a-tak. It is dices of tender lamb, capsicum, and onion cooked in a spicy tomato gravy.

And the last main was fish masala, specially marinated fish cooked in onion gravy to perfection.

In Punjabi Dhaba, you can choose your preference of spiciness from mild, medium to hot. For this meal, we ordered all medium hot, so that everyone of us get to enjoy the food to the fullness. If the food is too spicy, you won't get to taste the food properly as it had affected your taste buds.

Since there were 2 kids around, one mild vegetarian food were ordered specially for them. It was the mushroom corn masala, mushroom and corn kernels cooked in special Dhaba gravy.

We also ordered two portion of Basmati rice, a Dhaba's crispy paratha and two plain naan to go with all our mains.

It was a really satisfying dinner that night.

Punjabi Dhaba
308 Te Irrirangi Drive,
Botany South,
Auckland

Phone: 09 272 2322
Website: http://punjabidhaba.net.nz/