Moti Mahal Delux Restaurant is one of those Indian restaurants in Abu Dhabi, UAE that feels a little more polished than the usual casual spots.
There are so many Indian expats living in the UAE,
so in Abu Dhabi and Dubai,
it’s incredibly easy to find Indian restaurants.
But when a place is too cheap or looks a little run-down,
I hesitate to go even if the food is supposed to be good.
So I started looking for somewhere a bit nicer,
and found a place on Google Maps that looked surprisingly upscale.
It was Moti Mahal Delux Restaurant,
Moti Mahal Delux Restaurant.
It’s a great restaurant in downtown Abu Dhabi,
and there’s parking right in front, which was a huge plus.
Once I walked in, I immediately liked the clean, elegant interior.
It made a great first impression.
You can tell the restaurant has been around for a while,
but it’s also obvious they take really good care of the place.
Even the staff were neatly dressed in uniform,
and since the prices are a little high for an Indian restaurant,
it didn’t seem to attract many Indian diners.
I noticed more Arab guests and foreign tourists like us.
They also had a baby chair available,
and we were seated in a partitioned booth.
The table setting was neat and tidy,
and then it was time to study the menu.
The menu is huge.
There were also a lot of dish names I didn’t recognize.
After staring at it for a while,
I finally asked the staff for help.
I mentioned the kind of curry I usually enjoy in Korea,
and they kindly pointed me to something similar.
Maybe it’s because India is such a huge country,
but it seems like the same dishes can go by different names depending on the region.
We ordered one curry, one biryani, and one grilled chicken dish.
First, they brought out pickles and a pre-meal snack.
I wouldn’t really call it bread,
it was more like a flat, crispy rice cracker with a salty kick.
Kind of like when someone puts down a big puffed rice cracker
and you keep nibbling on it without realizing it.
It had that same addictive snacky vibe, though it was definitely on the salty side.
I’m not a huge fan of lassi,
so I went with a Coke Zero instead.
The dishes didn’t come out one by one.
Everything arrived at the same time.
One of the dishes was an Indian-style grilled chicken,
and the menu name was JHEENGA TANDOORI.
It was boneless like chicken tikka, so it was really easy to eat.
We also ordered Hyderabadi biryani,
a boneless chicken biryani rice dish,
and the portion was massive—honestly enough for almost three people.
My husband said he used to eat biryani all the time
when he traveled to Hyderabad, India for work,
so even back in Korea,
he would sometimes look for biryani at Indian restaurants, and this one was delicious too.
Then they brought over another side dish,
and I was sure we hadn’t ordered it, so I asked.
They told us it was meant to be eaten with the biryani.
I had never imagined a fried-rice-style dish with yogurt on the side,
and honestly I wasn’t curious enough to try it, so I skipped it.
But of course later on,
I started wondering if I should have tasted it after all.
And then there was the curry and naan, which were both so good.
I was craving chicken makhani,
but I couldn’t find it anywhere on the menu, so I asked.
They told me MURG MAKHANI MAHARAJ
was the same thing as chicken makhani. Not exactly the easiest name to guess.
We ordered garlic naan, and it was really good.
I do go out for Indian food once in a while
in Korea too, and the flavors here were actually very similar.
Since there are also lots of Indian and Nepali chefs
cooking at restaurants in Korea,
I feel like the overall flavor profile tends to be pretty consistent.
I especially loved how generously the curry was packed with chicken.
The total came to about $45,
and from other Korean reviews I’d seen,
that seemed to be what groups of three or four people were paying here.
We had a lot of biryani left over, but we completely finished the curry and chicken.
Compared with other Indian restaurants,
the prices were definitely a bit higher, but the service was great,
and both the restaurant and the food felt clean and well-presented, so I left happy.
If you’re planning a trip, this is a solid Indian restaurant in Abu Dhabi, UAE worth trying at least once.