Akbar Cuisine of India

The setting is beautiful Pasadena where movies can cost from $2.00 to $30.00 dollars, where a monthly gym membership can cost $200, and MOST IMPORTANTLY where there is a lot of different ethnic foods.  Before watching the movie, Crazy, Stupid, Love, we ventured to Akbar for Indian cuisine.  Now Cherry Bomb and I fell in love with Indian food in London and have been searching for an amazing Indian restaurant since then.  And here we go!  

Good for: Dinners with friends and family

Parking: Next to Akbar is a parking structure, make sure you get your ticket validated!

Scene: Dim lighting and a pungent smell of various herbs and spices as you walk in. Small space consider making reservations

Service: Very helpful.  Fills water very frequently

Noise level: Semi-loud chatter with a crying baby.  Indian white noise music HAHA 

Seating: Indoor

Price: $$
Rating: 2.5/5

We ate:  Garlic Nan, samosas, tandoori chicken, mint chicken, chicken tikka massala, and lamb coco.    

Right when we walked in, the pungent smells of indian spices and herbs rushed into our noses.  It was pretty empty as it was a random day of the week.  Adjacent from where we were sitting was the open kitchen.  We were able to see them make the food roughly 6 feet away; fire spewing and chefs ladling curry into bowls.   We pleasantly waited for our food as there was a good lag time between ordering, appetizers, and main entree.  

The aforementioned ladling of curry

Pretty cool being able to watch them make food

Samosas 

Verdict: These were probably the largest samosas I've seen.  They tasted pretty good. Good to start with.  The samosas were made of vegetables, peas, and potatoes.  Cherry Bomb almost blew up because it was quite spicy.


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Assortment of spicy sauces

Garlic Nan bread

Verdict: The garlic nan is pretty good!  I was pleased with the texture and strength of the garlic flavor.  It was gigantic! Pairing the nan bread with the curries made my stomach and taste buds happy.

Chicken Tikka Masala

Verdict: It had a good amount of garlic flavor and it was not too spicy.  It could have been made a bit sweeter and it was most definitely more on the sour side of life.  It was loaded with pieces of chicken breast. Overall, the masala is a safe bet.
 

Lamb Coco

Verdict: Now I liked this dish more than the masala.  There were hearty chunks of perfectly cooked lamb.  It was an interesting flavor as there was a bit of coconut flavor in it, hence the name.  It was a bit spicier than the masala which made me very happy.  It was really good with rice.  I would recommend this dish for Akbar goers.

Tandoori Chicken and Mint Chicken

Verdict: The chicken seems to be more on the dry side.  If it weren't for the curry, this wouldn't have been a good choice.  The mint chicken didn't taste like mint at all but it was still decent.  

Overall, the food is decent.  Pretty good if you can't think of anywhere else to go.  Our journey for an awesome Indian restaurant continues! 

Until next time,