LDNReview
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
Namak Mandi
Included In
Namak Mandi is a restaurant that stays with you. The bubbling, smoking, flaming energy of this cash-only Pashtun restaurant in Tooting clings to your brain like the formative memory of a thrilling house party. The sound of crackling oil can bring you back to its sizzling chapli kebabs and the smell of smoke to its flame-torched woks of karahi. Its main space is 50% counter and 100% fervent energy. A meal here is an event that everyone wants in on.
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
Given the organised chaos that this restaurant exists in, it’s essential to approach Namak Mandi with a degree of strategy. Reservations are essential—it’s small and popular. Staff squeeze past tables balancing bowls of salads and swinging Afghan naans the size of pillowcases on hooks. Walk-ins, who hover around in a waiting room where the sole prescription is sizzling lamb patties, point to the menu above the takeaway counter, shout their order, and count cash all at once.
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
If downstairs is an area for everyone, upstairs at Namak Mandi is strictly VIP. Reservations for their gargantuan pre-ordered lamb sajji are fulfilled in a handful of stark, white-lit, pillow-laden rooms, equipped with fans ramped up to typhoon mode. These gluttonous chambers are where mess and memories are made, sitting cross-legged and leaning into karahi sauces, piling plates and tearing into those billowing naans. Lamb sajji (be it a leg, a half, or an entire creature) arrives in a trough, the meat sitting on a nation’s supply of kabli pulao. It’s pink, tender, and best attacked with hands.
Restaurants that claim to be a unique dining experience are now 10-a-penny in London. But in Namak Mandi’s endearingly unphotogenic private dining rooms you’ll have a meal to talk about forever. Or, at least until the next time you want to devour a small animal. Even a takeaway, pawed at on the way before being unwrapped at home, is a cut above the rest. But with restaurants like Namak Mandi, you really have to be there.
Food Rundown
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
Peshawari Chapli Kebab
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
Charsi Chicken Karahi
photo credit: Jake Missing
Lamb Sajji
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch
Kabli Pulao
photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch