Travel Guide Peshawar

Charsi Tikka Peshawar

The restaurant’s most popular dish is the namkeen tikka. For this, the meat for the tikka is dusted with coarse salt and grilled on barbeque skewers on an open spit.

The meat is turned over every few minutes and brushed lightly with ghee. After around 45 minutes, the meat is sloughed off the skewers and served with fresh tandoori bread and a mint sauce.

A namkeen tikka is mostly ordered as an appetiser, as the wait for other meat dishes – all of which are made fresh to order – can be a long one.

The namkeen karhai is a variation of the same dish, catered to those who like a bit of gravy alongside their meat.

Diced meat is tossed into a wok with fresh tomatoes, green chillies, garlic, vegetable stock and animal fat.

Salt is added to the karhai as well, which is cooked in the wok for about an hour, over charcoal.

The dish is a simple one, but the smokiness of the coal adds depth to the flavour.

The karhai is customarily followed by steaming cups of green tea with either honey or lemongrass, because the gravy is rich with animal fat.