Mixed marriage … Lebanese meets the tandoor: Maroosh

Maroosh is a small, three to four table restaurant. It has two branches. One at Phoenix Mills and one at Carter Road Bandra.

We went to the Phoenix Mills one recently for the first time. This is a small joint with some fairly tempting kebabs and a shwarma/ dolma stick on display. We tried a chicken shwarma (Rs 100, 2 USD) which was quite filling. In fact it had a bit too much chicken for me. A nice and filling snack.

Encouraged by the shwarma we went to the Carter road one for dinner once we returned to Bandra. There we found that they had an Indian range in addition to the Lebanese stuff.

I tried the chicken biryani which I quite liked. The rice was nice and dry (I had specified that I didn’t want masala). The chicken pieces were tender and I loved the bites of caramelised fried onions in the biriyani.

Kainaz tried the hummus and pita bread which was really good. The hummus was creamy and delightfully well flavoured. One of the best that we have had. The pita bread was quite good too.

Since then we have ordered home a few times.

Once we had friends over including a Bengali. We Bengalis are quite picky about our biriyanis. In this case my friend gave the biriyani a big thumbs up as I did a few days back.

We ordered two types of kebabs – chicken malai kebabs and kalimiri (pepper) kebabs. Both were pretty good extremely succulent and delicate.

We ordered shwarmas (mushroom) for a vegetarian friend and it worked for him too.

The chicken curry (lahori) was extremely oily and red though and I wouldn’t particularly recommend it.

We ordered a hummus and pita bread once again when we had a friend over. That was a slightly bad idea for a starter as the pita bread goes dry when you keep it out for a while. Not the stuff to munch your evening away with. You are better of having the hummus with lavash. Lavash are crackers and don’t go stiff when kept in the open.

On the whole I would recommend them for their:

– hummus and pita bread
– biriyani
– kebabs

It’s a fairly inexpensive place with most dishes priced in the range of Rs 100 – 150 ( 2 – 3 USD). Not a fancy place to sit down – open air, 3,4 bench like seats but worth considering if you want a good and inexpensive eat.

Ordering home works fairly well and once they even delivered a single order of hummus and pita bread.