4 guys and 2 girls, decked up in Indian clothes, walk in at midnight starving after a night of dancing.
Everyone here freezes to gape and the girls feel highly uncomfortable. Half the guys go to the counter, one look at the food, and they're strongly convinced otherwise.
One glance at the booths and tables, and no one has an appetite left to eat here. Not that they had much most of us could eat by way of only their daal being vegetarian. But more importantly, all the food looked stale.
Now I love middle of nowhere local food joints for some of the tastiest stuff, but this doesn't feature in that category. There are better food options even for Indian/Pakistani just a couple of blocks from here, which we're going to stick to~
So I went here a year or two ago on a recommendation of a friend in Chicago and it really measured up to my needs: good ol' greasy Pakistani food.
We were in Chicago again, this time with my family, so I recommended coming here, knowing full well that it was a sanctuary for taxi drivers. If you are a female and entered this place, it would be jaw dropping, just because I don't know if more than ten of you have ever taken steps inside here?
Anyways, we drove all the way out here just to find that this restaurant with a mosque in the basement has closed down :(
Major boo on that one! I give you one star instead of the four you woulda gotten just cuz you closed!
This is not a place for the faint of heart nor is it a place for those who haven't had Pakistani food before...I'd also say that if you're uncomfortable at all with the phrase "hole-in-the-wall" that you avoid this place.
However, if you want some serious cultural exchange, then you should eat here. The clientele consists of the Chicago cabbie crowd who seem to think that fake chandeliers on the ceiling are classy.
The food isn't half bad and the naan is really amazing(the dude yells into a microphone to some chef in the back to make it fresh for you). I don't know their usual menu, but the mutton korma and rice were greasy and not to be taken lightly, no pun intended.
Anyway, I'd go here again without any reservations, it was literally another world. I was just sad that it was buffet style and that it was slightly more expensive than expected($9 for a full plate).
This place is located in the cabbie vein of River North, and lumped together with the others (Kababish, Baba Palace), Zaiqa is not one of the highlights.
This restaurant is very similar in style to Kababish, with a counter up front filled with trays of food that you select. Once again, there are no menus or identification of the food, so it's up to you to ask. The difference between Zaiqa and Kababish is that this place is busy. That means the food is better, right? Not so. In fact, it's about on par with Kababish, for $2 more per entree and a smaller portion. Plus, the service isn't nearly as nice. I'd guess that most of the cabbies are here for the winning combination of prayer and pool, with the food coming in at a distant third.
I ordered the chicken biryani, my current litmus test for Pakistani food. The rice was a tad bit more moist than Kababish, but apart from that it was nearly identical: a mound of rice with large chicken parts inside. I sampled a piece of naan as well, which was nothing special: soggy and relatively tasteless.
This place was disappointing and left a bad taste in mouth. I can spend $9 on far better meals in this area.
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