The patience of a royal kitchen, set for tonight.
Shahi Nawabs is a small dining room devoted to Awadhi cooking at its most deliberate — pots sealed with dough, kebabs softened to silk, saffron measured by the thread. One tasting menu, seven courses, no shortcuts.
A house built on dum.
Dum pukht — "to breathe and to cook" — is the old Lucknowi habit of sealing a pot with dough and letting steam finish what fire began. It cannot be hurried, supervised, or faked. You seal the pot, and you trust the work you put in before the lid went on.
We cook that way, and we're building the restaurant that way too. The room is being finished now: a dozen tables, a counter facing the dum station, and a kitchen staffed for slowness. When the pot is ready to open, you'll know.
Until then, the menu below is the promise we intend to keep on opening night.
The tasting menu
Seven courses, served to the whole table, in the order the nawabi dastarkhwan intended: light to rich, rich to sweet. Vegetarian passage available for every course.
Shorba
A clear mutton broth perfumed with mace and kewra water, poured at the table.
Galawat ke kebab
The famous melting kebab of Lucknow — minced lamb tenderized with raw papaya, griddled in ghee, lifted with an ulte tawe ka paratha.
Mahi tikka kali mirch
River-fish tikka in a white-pepper and cream marinade, finished over charcoal.
Nimbu paani sorbet
A pause. Lime, black salt, and a little rose — the palate wiped clean for what follows.
Dum pukht biryani
The sealed pot, opened at your table. Aged basmati, saffron, and lamb that has been breathing in its own steam for hours.
Nihari khaas
A small bowl of the overnight stew the nawabs ate at dawn, with a sheermal to tear.
Shahi tukda
Fried bread soaked in saffron milk and rabri — the dessert that forgave every royal excess, and will forgive yours.
Menu pricing and seatings will be published when reservations open. Courses may shift with the season.
Three disciplines of the kitchen
Everything we serve passes through one of three stations, each kept the old way.
The sealed pot
Biryanis and qormas finished under a dough seal, timed by ear and habit rather than clock.
The slow griddle
Galawat and shami kebabs on a heavy iron tawa, one ladle of ghee at a time, never crowded.
The spice room
Whole spices roasted and ground each afternoon; saffron bloomed in warm milk, counted in threads.
Request a table
Reservations open when the room does. Leave your name and we will write to you before the public book opens — the first seatings go to this list.