Nihari a thought...

Cilantro is decidedly one of the flavour front-runners of Indian cuisine and perhaps as an allusion to this fact, the newly-opened food stall Cilantro which has opened up in Express Avenue too promises a tryst with tastes and textures that will leave you with flavours aplenty to savour.
Presented as a hardcore proponent of Bohra Muslim cuisine, the little stall, that shares grub-shop with the health-food outlet Nutri 7 has a menu that features some of the most popular, mouth-watering delicacies.And truly, what represents this type of cuisine better than a tureen of creamy haleem? Prepared with wheat, meat, lentils and spices, the slow-cooked dish served up here is a rich, velvety delight. The flavours of the spices and meat blend together beautifully to tease the palate into submission; and we suspect the experience would have been that much better had the meat of choice been mutton, as opposed to the chicken that has been used here. However, we dwell not on these details, as the divine nihari catches our attention with zesty assurance.
The Pakistani dish, not available in too many other eateries in Chennai, holds within it not only the myriad aromas of the multivariate spices but also has the coy meaty presence of the lamb shanks intact. If any, our grouse is that it is a tad salty. And then there’s the paya, the dish that every carnivore worth his meat professes to love, which surprisingly enough doesn’t do much for us, just about passing muster. All three dishes are good to be had solo, but you can also opt for rotis or the extremely tasty biryani. The kebabs are nothing to write home about; the smoked chicken kebab in particular, said to be one of their signatures, is dry, a little hard and disappointing once you manage to break through the fried outer cover.
And to make up for this, we suggest you load up on the nihari and haleem and gorge to your heart’s content and finish off with a satisfied ‘mmmeat’.