A kitchen that started long before the sign went up.
Zaikah — zaiqah, taste, the thing you remember about food long after the plate is cleared. That's the word we chose because that's the promise we mean to keep.
Ferozepur Road, a family kitchen, a very loud aunt.
I grew up a few kilometres from where Zaikah now stands. Sunday mornings in our house meant one of the elders in the kitchen from ten till two — usually my phupho, wooden spoon in one hand, opinion in the other. If the karahi wasn't reduced enough she'd send it back to the flame herself.
Those meals fed cousins, neighbours, and whoever wandered in. Nobody left without eating twice. That's the kind of place I wanted to open — not a showpiece restaurant, but a family kitchen that happens to have a proper dining room attached to it.
Zaikah is that idea, finally standing on its own feet, on the same road I grew up on.
Fresh, slow, and cooked over real fire.
Sourced daily
Meat comes in every morning from vendors we've worked with for years. If a spice batch isn't right, we don't serve it that day.
Coal and clay
Our BBQ runs over lump coal. Our naan hits the wall of a real tandoor. No gas grills, no shortcuts — that's where the smoke comes from.
Feeds a family
Portions built for sharing. Half plates that can actually feed two people. Bulk orders for weddings, iftars and mehndis, done properly.
A few years in the making.
The idea
A conversation on a rooftop iftar. Someone said the neighbourhood needed a proper family place. Nobody disagreed.
The kitchen team
We brought in cooks who trained on karahis and tandoors long before we ever put a menu together.
The recipes
Nine months of tasting. Some dishes cut. The masala for the biryani got remade four times.
Come eat with us on the 24th.
Zaikah isn't trying to be a fine-dining monument. It's a family kitchen with a good dining room, on the road we grew up on, cooking food that tastes the way it used to at home. That's the whole idea.
Flavor that feels like home.