Nihari

M's favorite food is definitely Nihari. It's big chunks of beef served with lots of spicy curry sauce. It's cooked for a really long time (or in a pressure cooker) so that the meat is really tender, and it's served with all kind of garnishes like chopped cilantro leaves, matchsticks of ginger, lemon wedges and tiny, fiery chopped green chilies. 

M loves Nihari so much that it's almost an unhealthy obsession. In college and University, he used to go out once a week with a group of friends to his very favorite restaurant, Javaid Nihari. Whenever he's gone back to Pakistan he always eats there at least once, and brings some back home with him to eat the next morning for breakfast too. (Because Nihari is considered a breakfast food, too.)

In fact, he even brings some Javaid Nihari home-home, too. Like HERE home. As in he specifically travels to the Javaid Nihari restaurant on the day before our plane leaves to take us back to America, orders three or four extra portions of Nihari, takes them to a place where they can food, and packs it in his suitcase. When we get home, the cans are put directly into the freezer and then over the course of the next couple weeks and months, he'll take one out as a treat and eat Javaid Nihari in America. Even though the cans sat un-refrigerated in his luggage for more than a day. See what I mean about "almost unhealthy obsession?"

We make Nihari at home too, but it's one of those things that my mother-in-law doesn't cook from her own recipe. She uses spice mixes sold in stores and mostly considers Nihari something you go out and buy to eat rather than make at home. 

When we went to Pakistan in 2004, M took me to Javaid Nihari with one of those old friends (and his wife.) It was good. Unfortunately nihari is often served with cooked brain, and M had ordered it that way, and we were sharing a bowl, so I stopped eating after parts of his brain started coming over to my side of the plate. But that just gave me more time to take pictures of the place!

Nihari is served and eaten with naan, and at Javaid Nihari they just keep bringing out plates of the most delicious naan I've ever had - fresh and hot from the tandoor oven. I took a picture of the waiter bringing our naan, but one of the most fascinating things was the naan production line. If the restaurant just served lots of nihari, it makes sense that you're going to need lots of naan. 

There was this big area at the front of the restaurant where several men were sitting on a raised platform. They were surrounded by all these balls of dough, and there were a few guys for each part of the naan making process; a few guys making the dough, a few rolling out the balls of dough, a few guys manning the tandoor ovens. It was quite the sight to see.

The rest of the pictures are just random shots from inside the restaurant. Posting pictures from travels past means I don't have a picture from outside of the storefront, I'm not sure why I didn't take that picture. But I've got a great picture of a guy eating nihari whose hair is matted down with mehndi he's using as hair dye (and then decided to go out for dinner with the stuff still on?)

Mid- hair-dying nihari craving?

We were seating in the upstairs "family section" and this is a shot looking down at the main seating area of the restaurant.

From outside looking in at the to-go counter, the balcony at the top it the family section.