On the ordering site of Mughal Mahal, an Indian restaurant whose logo reads “since 1985”, there is a menu section you would not expect. In Arabic it is called Taste of Kuwait. And what is in it is not Indian at all.
What the section holds
Lentil soup — the restaurant describes it as the classic Kuwaiti soup, slow-cooked with cumin, turmeric and lemon. 1.550 KD.
Potato maraq curry and okra maraq curry — two slow-cooked stews, which the site itself describes as “Gulf home style”, recommended with rice or naan.
Gulf family meal — meat biryani, 15 pieces, an okra stew, a potato stew, two lentil soups and six naan, for 19.500 KD.
Gulf seafood platter — hammour tikka, prawn biryani, two seafood soups and four naan.
Alongside them in the same section sit openly Indian dishes: chicken tandoori, prawn tandoori, and sweets such as ras malai and gulab jamun by the kilo.
What is worth noticing
The buffet is at two branches only. The “dine-in buffet” line is marked plainly: Hawally and Fahaheel only. Anyone who goes to another branch looking for the buffet will not find it.
More than half the items carry no published price. Many dishes read “price on selection”, so you do not know what you are paying until you pick the size and type. The same approach repeats on the more expensive dishes, which are the ones whose price you most need in advance.
The delivery minimum is 3.950 KD, the restaurant’s phone is 1800188, and it has branches in all six governorates according to the area list on its site.
Why the section is worth a pause
A restaurant open in Kuwait since the mid-1980s does not add an okra stew to its menu for decoration. The section says something about the customer before it says anything about the kitchen: after four decades, the Indian restaurant is cooking what is cooked in its customers’ homes, not only what it brought with it.
Photo: okra stew. By E4024, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
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