I have always maintained that no industry is as resilient or self-supporting as the hospitality sector, and it took a visit to the reopened The Great Kabab Factory (TGKF) to convince me that the worst is certainly over for the restaurant business, which took a severe hit during the pandemic, and is still operating at 50 per cent capacity because of ‘social distancing’ rules.
TGKF may not have been as packed as I have been accustomed to seeing it, but I learnt that even when it was shut, the restaurant’s loyal patrons were ordering in its signature mutton galouti and barrah kababs. The taste of good food neither leaves the collective palate, nor has the imagination of a restaurant’s loyal clientele—and this truism held good for the 22 years that TGKF has been around.
The restaurant has followed a formula that cannot but get it repeat footfalls. Order unlimited non-vegetarian or vegetarian kababs (or a mix of both) with accompanying breads (the sheermal is the star of the selection), biryanis, dals, curries and desserts—you can’t get a better deal than this, especially when TGKF has more than 450 kababs in its repertoire. The sheer number of offerings assures you that none will be repeated on any two given days, so it is theoretically possible to have a TGKF meal daily for a week without any kabab (barring perhaps the signature galouti or barrah kabab, which the restaurant doesn’t want you to miss) being duplicated.
In my early days of food writing, it was at TGKF that I learnt kababs can be roasted in a tandoor, grilled on a sigri or a stone, shallow fried on a mahi tawa, or deep-fried in a kadhai or a thick-bottomed copper lagan. If you multiply the cooking methods with options in meats, fish, seafood, vegetables and fruits, the number kababs can only be limited by the lack of imagination of the chefs.
Fortunately for TGKF, it has never had a chef deficient in this critical department. You get a sense of it when you see the vegetarian selections on the menu—my personal favourites are the dahi ke kabab, pudina seb ananas (tandoori apple and pineapple) and dohra kumbh (two batterdipped mushrooms stuffed with cheese and deep-fried). TGKF is open on all days for dinner; on Sundays, it serves lunch. No matter when you go, build up quite an appetite before you do. You wouldn’t come back disappointed.