24698 Tue Jun 24 22:54:22 -0700 2003 5 1 San Francisco Bay Area 0 96917 A recent addition to our growing fleet of Punjabi cabdriver joints is Lahore Karahi on O'Farrell Street. It was opened last month by, as it happens, a retired DeSoto driver. The menu will look familiar to anyone who's tried the other Pakistani-Indian places in the neighborhood, with a couple of twists. The food has been up and down on my visits, and at times it seems the folks here are still learning how to run a restaurant. But they are friendly and eager to please, and doing enough things right that I hope they figure it out. The owner is counting on a handful of stir-fried dishes to help set his place apart from the pack. Naan 'n' Curry serves two of these, but otherwise they aren't common around here. They're named after the woklike pan they're made in, karahi in Urdu. Lamb, chicken or salmon is marinated in spices, then cooked quickly and served with a small amount of sauce -- as opposed to being simmered in premade curry sauces. In a slightly gimmicky touch, they come in a shiny miniature karahi. I'm not convinced they're going to put this restaurant on the map. I liked the karahi fish ($6.99), cubes of salmon with bright flavors of ginger, garlic, cumin, coriander and cayenne, though it could have used more chile heat. (Well, I liked it once; another time it was gloppy and over-salted.) The chicken version ($5.99) had muddy, indistinct flavors and too much oil. I've had better luck with some of the more familiar dishes. Aloo palak methi ($3.99) is yellow potato in chopped spinach and fenugreek leaves, with subdued but well-balanced spicing. Dal bhuna ($3.99) is the meaty-textured chana dal, flavored with ginger and flecks of red chile and cilantro. Unless I've just been getting the gringo treatment, the house style for all these dishes is on the mild side. But, as cabbies might say, your mileage may vary. Another way Lahore Karahi seems to be trying to distinguish itself is by offering more seafood than its competitors. Besides the karahi dish, there is fish cooked in the tandoor ($6.99), fat chunks of salmon marinated in ginger, garlic, cumin, coriander and cayenne. It comes out deep brown in places, like blackened fish, and mostly moist inside, though a couple of pieces were overdone when I had it. Jheenga masala ($8.99) is a generous portion of shrimp in a mellow orange sauce garnished with cilantro. Naan ($1-$2.99) emerges from the tandoor slightly less well done than at most of the other Indian places, lightly browned with pillowy patches. Sometimes it's brushed with ghee, other times not. I've overheard the staff debating which way is better. Guess they haven't decided yet. In fact many things here are still in flux. A few dishes have disappeared from the menu, others have been added. Not long after the restaurant opened, I ordered what I thought would be grilled fish (since replaced on the menu by tandoori fish). The owner pulled up a chair, sat down and with great enthusiasm described two ways he could cook it. Not quite grasping the difference, I hesitated. No problem, he said, he'd do it both ways, and did -- one in a pan, the other in the tandoor -- then later made a point of asking which I'd liked better and why. A couple of other times he's wandered over to my table, evidently not seen enough food on it, and comped me a dish of dal. Whatever the shortcomings of the place, the attitude is disarming. There are just a couple of hints that this space was occupied for decades by the German Cook: a Dortmunder Kronen sign out front, a Bitburger sign (``Bitte ein Bit'') inside. One wall is covered with pictures from Lahore: the city's 16th century fort, Badshahi Mosque, the famous Shalimar Gardens (there is no ``Naan 'n' Curry Gardens,'' as far as I can tell). Lahore Karahi 612 O'Farrell St., San Francisco (415) 567-8603 Tue Jun 24 22:54:22 -0700 2003 0 squid-kun 1 96927 Thank you for explaining what a "karahi" is. When this restaurant was first mentioned on this board, I assumed that it was a misspelling of Karachi! Are the miniature karahis used for service flat-bottomed so that you can cut with a knife easily? Or is another plate provided to eat from? The mini-woks that some Chinese restaurants serve their chow fun and other dishes in tend to rock and aren't suitable as a cutting surface. Even the flat bottomed mini-paellerias tend to rock because they're usually placed on top another plate. However, the food has already been cut up, so no need to use a knife for paella. Link: http://chowhound.safeshopper.com/23/cat23.htm?842 Wed Jun 25 03:22:26 -0700 2003 96917 0 Melanie Wong 2 96931 Yes, other plates are provided for eating. (Or I should say, they're stacked on a rack and you fetch them yourself, in the neighborhood custom.) The little karahis do seem to be just for serving. They're disproportionately high and squat compared with the real thing, and it would be kind of hard to get a knife in there. Wed Jun 25 03:54:50 -0700 2003 96927 0 squid-kun 1 96953 Are karahi dishes a little like balti dishes, found in the Indian restaurants of the UK? That's something that's nearly impossible to find on this side of the Atlantic, and they were so good! Stir-fried vegetables and cheese or meat, with pretty spicy spices, served in a round metal balti dish (and I always assumed cooked in it, but now I'm not so sure). I'll have to check this place out... Thanks! Wed Jun 25 13:51:15 -0700 2003 96917 0 Alexandra 2 98207 Yes, that's right, same kind of cooking. Sorry, didn't know this back when you asked, though I had a vague notion that "balti" was more often used across the pond. Just this week I ran across a mention of it in the India volume of the Lonely Planet World Food series (which I recommend). Then I poked around online and found the site below. Link: http://www.owlsprings.com/the_balti_page.html Thu Jul 17 23:09:20 -0700 2003 96953 0 squid-kun 2 98233 Legend, or maybe rumor has it, that the first guy who used it had forgotten the word 'karahi' (wok), so he used 'balti' (bucket) instead. Wed Oct 08 13:58:40 -0700 2003 96953 0 Topp