Sometime last year, one of my friends introduced me to nihari. Nihari is a Pakistani stew made with beef or mutton. It is fatty, rich, heavily spiced, and quite delicious. I have had nihari where there mutton is so tender and succulent that it seems to have disintegrated into the stew. The nihari I’ve had I’ve eaten with giant pieces of oven baked flat bread, or naan. My understanding is that in restaurants in Lahore it is generally served with naan as well. I think a lot of the restaurants in Abu Dhabi that serve nihari either bake the bread on premise, or get them from a nearby bakery. Either way, the bread usually comes so hot that you have to wait a minute or two for it to cool down. A popular variation of nihari is nihari with mughuz, or brains. I’ve had this variation twice, and both times it added a whole new level of indulgence to the dish. So indulgent that I found it hard to even share a plate with a friend! I think the brains get added towards the end of the cooking process, so there are still large chunks, but some of the fat renders into the stew nonetheless.

For the last month or so, I’ve been searching for the best nihari in Abu Dhabi. I’ve been to a few restaurants in Abu Dhabi, and one in Dubai. From what I can tell, nihari is harder to come by here than in Dubai, as evidenced by the fact that we found some four nihari restaurants in a small area north of Deira, in Dubai. The following is a (not comprehensive) small list of restaurants that serve nihari, with some commentary and pictures:

  • New Nemat Kedah restaurant, Madinat Zayed, behind the fresh market.

For better or worse, this has come to be sort of my canonical nihari experience. I’ve had nihari here some four or five times (although I’ve yet to take a picture ) and I’ve enjoyed it. However, I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed eating nihari here. It’s good, but its not mind boggling. I struggle to identify exactly what is wrong with this nihari. Maybe it hasn’t been stewed for long enough. Maybe they don’t use the previous day’s nihari to cook it (Rumors abound of a pot of nihari cooking in Lahore that has nihari from the start of the 20th century). Maybe the spice mix is slightly off, or it’s not hot enough. This feels like the kind of nihari you get every week, not the nihari you get on a special occasion.

  • Masala, on Electra St (Zayed the First St), in al Hosn.

The most “accessible” nihari I’ve had. By this I mean that there wasn’t the familiar half centimeter thick layer of rendered fat at the top, and there was more meat than I was used to seeing (versus bones with some meat, and mostly fat). This one felt like more of a side dish than a main course. They served the sliced ginger, green chilis, and lime separately. I like this approach, because it means that we could season to taste (which, in our case, meant dumping all the ginger and chilis in). Masala’s bread is excellent. I think I’d take their lamb chops over the nihari any day, but it’s good if you’re in a group with more than a few people.

masala-nihari

  • Habib restarant, in Tourist Club Area.

I’ve only had the paya here. They alternate days serving nihari and paya. This place is sort of cool in that they don’t really have a menu in English. The staff seemed a little surprised to see me, but they were happy to serve me up some paya with piping hot naan. The paya came with a healthy dose of sliced ginger and green chilis. They were definitely necessary, as the dish tasted a little bland. I want to go back to see what the nihari is all about. Every time that I’ve tried to get nihari here, its been sold out, leading me to believe it’s pretty .

habib-paya

  • Sahar restaurant, Madinat Zayed

I went here over a year ago, and I honestly don’t remember what the nihari was like. High on my list of places to go.

Clearly, I’m in need of some recommendations! Let me know if you’re aware of any good nihari spots in Abu Dhabi. I haven’t set up a comments section yet, but hit me up on all the social media.

Aside on Bakeries

For those not familiar with Abu Dhabi’s makhaabiz (مجابز), or bakeries, they are a really cool aspect of the city’s street life (I say مجابز because I’m practicing typing in Arabic. For those interested in the history of typesetting in Arabic, I found this article. I wasn’t able to find the images they mentioned, but the article is still quite fascinating.). The bakeries sell 1 dirham pieces of freshly baked bread that are so big you could park a Nissan Patrol on them. I’ve heard rumors of late that some of these bakeries will do a sort of manakeesh (مناقيش) with their bread, but I’ve yet to confirm.

Aside on mughuz

Mughuz (مغز) does not appear to be an Arabic or Urdu word (someone hit me up if I have this wrong), but rather a Persion word. I think the word for brain in Arabic is دِماغ. I think I’ve heard mughuz used in other food contexts before (in particular, a Syrian restaurant in Sharjah that served pretty amazing breakfast food), so I wonder if this is one of these things where the food form of a beast (or part of a beast in this case) takes on a different word, like Portuguese galinha/frango, or English cow/beef.