Rating: ****

Namak restaurant at Aamby Valley is one of the best restaurants to visit. The ambience of the restaurant is relaxed and elegant. The decor is contemporary and edgy. It’s very well lit which is unusual nowadays for restaurants. As soon as you enter there will be someone to attend to you and escort you to your table. The staff is very courteous and the service is quick. Namak makes you feel like a Nawab enjoying the delicious Awadhi and Hyderabadi cuisine.

While we got seated to our table, the servers were around us offering the wet napkin and the welcome drink. The concoction of this mint drink was refreshing and cool. Some of us actually asked for a second glass. While the food was getting prepared they serve us crispy flour sticks with 5 varieties of dips. It was good to munch on it while we waited for the food to arrive. 

This was followed by a stream of delicious food items one after the other till there was no space left on our table.

Not to bombard you with all the food items that I tried and tasted at Namak, here I’m sharing my top 5 pick that you MUST try when you visit Namak.

In starters, I liked Malai Doodhiya Mushroom. I’m very selective in vegetarian dishes as I mostly like the non-vegetarian fare but this dish stood out. It was served sizzling hot in the sizzler plate. Mushrooms were well cooked and soft to chew. The Awadhi spices rendered it a delicious taste.

Another notable starter I tried at Namak was Dhunar Murg Tikka. It was delicious with a right combination of spices used for marination and cooking. The chicken was succulent and tender and just the right amount of spicy.

In main course, I liked Ambade ka Murgh. It’s a thick chicken gravy with a generous dose of Indian spices. It tastes amazing with the soft roomali roti. Among the 3 different varieties of biryani, go with the mutton biryani. Originally biryani is supposed to be cooked with Mutton and here at Namak, I felt that the original version was the best version. The Mutton Biryani at Namak had retained and blended all the flavours well. The chefs cooked the biryani in the traditional steaming style. This is evident even with their serving vessels, the leads of which were covered with flour dough used to steam the biryani perfectly.

Do not forget to end your meal with the amazing Kesar Rasmalai. Yum. It’s sweet but not too sweet. The rasmalai is the melt-in-your-mouth kinds and tastes perfect. The kesar flavour is right there in a subtle way. It also comes with a side of vanilla ice-cream and choco stick.

The Nawabi treatment would be incomplete if one doesn’t end the traditional meal with a paan. Besides the taste, I loved how well it was wrapped and tied together. Another place which gives you a similar experience wrapped in vegetarian flavour is Maharaja Bhog.

You can read about it’s unlimited veg thali here.

Overall Namak is a place worth visiting. It’s definitely an expensive, high-end, fine dining restaurant but the food, service, the royal treatment is worth it. Do share your review and favourites if you have been here in the comment section below.

Food: 4/5  |  Ambience: 4/5  |  Service: 4.5/5  |  Value for money: 4/5