The Khyber Cuisine, Grangetown, Cardiff: review

Scuffed tabletops and vinyl banquettes: it’s basic in here. No designer has preened over this interior. It’s certainly Pakistani, rather than another of the typical Bangladeshi-run kitchens which are synonymous with ‘Indian’. There’s a clue in the wall-mounted picture of the Bab-e-Khyber (‘Khyber Gate’), built in 1964 to facilitate trade between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

A mixed grill: plastic sauce bottles to the side, a simple salad of lettuce and onion, with plenty more grilled into sweetness. There’s chicken tikka with real bite, the sort you are still enjoying twenty minutes later: wings too, and finely-minced seekh kebabs in both lamb and chicken, with a pronounced chilli, garlic and ginger tang. There’s a thumb-thick lamb chop with plenty of spring: it’s all a steal at £12.99.

From a long list of nans (a dozen- insert your own Saga Cruises joke here) keema wins, mainly because it is the King of Breads: nut-brown, glistening with ghee and crisp about the edges, generously stuffed with well- spiced lamb. There is little worse than a skimpy nan, although I appreciate a nan in something skimpy might not be your thing either.

A ghee-rich achari chicken (they do like their ghee here) hits the spot, with the eponymous ‘pickle’ in tangy evidence. If you were intrigued by the achari mayonnaise from Kumari recently in Canton- and I know I’m far from alone in this- you’ll enjoy these smoky-sour flavours.

Nehari lamb comes cubed, rather than served on the bone. The owner tells me it divides customers, some of whom ask for it on the shank and some not, but that he has given me what he was going to have for lunch. His loss- and kindness- is my gain. That lamb is gorgeously tender, the glossy sauce’s surface spiked with the bright heat of slivered ginger and green chillies, and it is obvious those precious bones have donated their marrow richness during cooking.

Grangetown might be a new destination for some, drawn to visit the excellent Matsudai. But there’s more to enjoy here than that. Khyber is as down-to-earth as you can get, yet there’s no short-changing on flavour. It is an inexpensive, satisfying place to eat- around £20 a head for this no-nonsense Pakistani home-style cooking- which is about as far from the welter of superficially appealing yet essentially underwhelming ‘Instagrammable’ bullshit as you can get in this city right now. Let’s thank the gods for that.

Khyber Kebab, Corporation Road, Grangetown CF11 7AN

Monday to Sunday 12.00- 10.30

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