TASTE OF PAKISTAN AT KABAB & CURRY
Family brings home cooking to Kabab & Curry Restaurant
Bilal Chatha knows exactly what many people think about Indian food because he’s heard it a thousand times: It’s too spicy, and it’s all about curry.
He shows them how wrong that is at Kabab & Curry Restaurant & Grill, the Indian/Pakistani restaurant his family opened in Pittsburgh’s Banksville neighborhood almost three years ago.
It’s true the Punjabi dishes he grew up eating and that his younger brother, Muhammad, prepares for customers draw heavily on fresh and dried spices, including fireball red chilies. But “spicy” doesn’t necessarily mean “hot,” he said.
While northern and southern Indian food both use cayenne, coriander and garam masala, the more sweat-inducing dishes come from the south.
“In our family of 10, only two eat spicy,” Bilal Chatha, 40, said with a laugh, noting that one is his mother, Iqbal, whose family recipes dominate the menu.
Punjabi cuisine — which comes from the Punjab regions of India and Pakistan
— was influenced by Persian cooking and is known for the rich, buttery flavors found in classic dishes like chicken makhani, chicken tikka masala and lamb korma, which are bolstered with yogurt, cream or ghee (clarified butter). The spices in vegetarian favorites like saag paneer, dal masoor (lentils) and aloo palak are more fragrant than bracing. Rice and wheat-based flatbreads such as naan, puri and paratha are also staples throughout the region.
Punjabi food draws heavily on tandoori, a cooking method that has become virtually synonymous with the meats, fish and breads prepared in bell-shaped clay ovens known as tandoors. Punjabi chefs popularized these ovens and their use had spread throughout India by the time the region was partitioned into parts of Pakistan and India in 1947.
Muhammad Chatha recently showed how he makes the restaurant’s Seekh Kabab Platter ($13.99).
After dampening his gloved fingers with water (to keep the meat from sticking), he formed a generous handful of minced and seasoned chicken into a long, sausage-like kabab while pressing it onto a flat metal skewer. The skewer was then lowered into the the hot tandoor at an angle, and cooked until the meat was charred to perfection.
The chicken tikka kabab platter ($13.99) is made the same way, only using chunks of marinated chicken instead. Both dishes are served on a bed of rice.
Naan, the leavened flatbread used to soak up every bit of sauce, is also baked in the tandoor. After the discs of dough are rolled into palm- sized circles and topped with grated garlic and parsley, they’re placed on a pillow, garlic-side down, and slapped inside the oven on the tandoor wall. Within a minute, the dough puffs up with air pockets that quickly morph into golden-brown blisters. They’re removed from the oven with a hook.
It’s hot and dangerous work. Mr. Chatha says he can’t count the number of times he has been burned reaching into the oven.
Because so many Pakistani dishes use yogurt, he makes his own twice a week using 12 gallons of milk per batch. Almost everything on the menu is prepared inhouse, including the garam masala spice mix ( from whole spices) that flavors so many dishes. Milky chai (tea), the national drink of Pakistan, is also scratchmade.
While the 35- year- old father of one was cooking kabab, his father, Pervez, was busy stirring a giant pot of tamarind sauce that had been simmering for more than a day. His mother, meanwhile, was putting the final touches on a pan of golden dal masoor and creamy chicken korma.
Mrs. Chatha — who has been cooking since she was a child in Pakistan’s secondlargest city of Lahore — is the restaurant’s head chef. No dish goes out of the kitchen without the matriarch’s approval, Bilal Chatha noted with a smile.
“She has very high standards,” he said, recalling one of her favorite sayings when something is not up to snuff: “If this is your best, your best needs to be better.”
Her careful taste-testing assures that what is served at the restaurant is as good as “something we eat at home,” he said.
That expertise is exemplified in the restaurant’s Hyderabadi biryani. It’s made using the “dum” technique on slow fire, with the meat/ vegetables and rice cooked separately before being layered and cooked together under a thin bread seal. It’s not Punjabi, but it appeals to customers who like the spicier dishes found in southern India, Bilal Chatha noted. (There’s one tablespoon of red chili per serving.)
The restaurant also caters to the westernized tastes of diners who prefer something more American. Muhammad Chatha calls it “Indian Specialty Pizza” ($19.99) and it’s made using traditional pizza dough and a tomato-y tikka masala sauce with toppings like crushed samosa, marinated chicken tikka and curried lamb. He originally crafted it on naan, but his teenage customers weren’t having it, “so I had to tweak the recipe.”
Other specialties include tandoori platters, an array of vegetarian dishes, several goat and lamb entrees and a handful of dishes from Lahore, including a Pakistani stew called beef nihari ($13.99).
“Our cuisine is so varied, it’s hard to offer just one food,” Bilal Chatha said.
The restaurant is a passion project for the family, decades in the making. Like many immigrants, Pervez Chatha could only dream of one day owning a restaurant when he emigrated to the U.S. solo in 1990. His family arrived nine years later after being sponsored by a brother living in Hermitage. They worked hard to open the restaurant in October 2018 and started to build a loyal clientele.
Mrs. Chatha pointed out every one of their many family members, including all four children, have helped, sometimes during vacations in Pittsburgh. Like their last name, the Chatha mantra starts with C’s: cuisine imbued with traditional Punjabi dishes, consistent flavors soaked in centuries-old tradition from the ancient Indus civilization, and clean premises.
Another C, the coronavirus, has made the restaurant business more of a struggle, with a big pivot toward takeout during the worst of the pandemic. The family says they’re just happy to be able to offer a taste of home to their loyal customers.
“We are just so grateful to the community who have supported us,” Bilal Chatha said.