Rahul's Post

There is a particular kind of snobbery that afflicts those of us who write about food — and I say this as someone guilty of practising it myself. It is the assumption that serious kabab culture can only be encountered in the crumbling havelis of Lucknow, in the smoke-blackened kitchens of Old Delhi, or perhaps in Kolkata's dying mehmankhanas where the last of the nawabi traditions are preserved like pressed flowers between the pages of an old diary. The hotel restaurant, one tends to believe, is where these traditions go to be photographed for Instagram and drained of all their soul. It is a prejudice I was forced to examine — and promptly discard — when I recently sat down to dinner at Radisson BLU Plaza Delhi Airport for their ongoing Great Kabab Carnival. The premise is ambitious, perhaps even audacious. A single spread that attempts to stitch together the kabab cultures of Awadh, Bengal, Chettinad, Punjab, and Maharashtra — all under one roof, all on one evening. The cynic in me expected the culinary equivalent of a greatest-hits album: technically competent, emotionally hollow. What I found instead was something rather more interesting. On the Nature of the Kabab Before I tell you what I ate, permit me a small digression — one which I promise is relevant. The word "kabab" has been so thoroughly abused in modern restaurant parlance that it has lost almost all meaning. Every grilled piece of protein now gets the designation, from a sad paneer tikka served on a sizzler plate to the genuinely transcendent preparations that emerged from the royal kitchens of the Mughals and their successors. The galouti, the kakori, the seekh, the kalmi — these are not merely dishes. They are arguments about fire, fat, spice, and time. They are the result of centuries of refinement. Which is why what the kitchen here has done deserves to be taken seriously. The Starters — Where the Evening Finds Its Voice Let me begin, as all good kabab evenings must, with the galawat. Kabab-e-Gosht Galawat The kitchen's finest moment. Inspired by the royal kitchens of Awadh, this melt-in-the-mouth mutton galouti arrives as a small, trembling disc of minced meat.

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This post was published on 16th April, 2026 by Rahul on his Instagram handle "@rahulprabhakar (Rahul Prabhakar)". Rahul has total 69.7K followers on Instagram and has a total of 2.4K post.This post has received 81 Likes which are lower than the average likes that Rahul gets. Rahul receives an average engagement rate of 0.31% per post on Instagram. This post has received 113 comments which are lower than the average comments that Rahul gets. Overall the engagement rate for this post was lower than the average for the profile.