Ali Baba

Rating: Very good
Meal: Lunch for 2
Price: 3500 yen
Payment: Cash only
Dishes: Chicken korma, dal fry, samosa chaat salad, rice, naan
English Menu:  Yes
Smoking: Yes

The more traditional menu

It was a long weekend so we used our Monday holiday to do all of our car registration stuff in Yokohama, which is just down the road from Ikea.  After the car stuff was taken care of, we were driving to Ikea when I spotted a mediterranean/indian looking restaurant called Ali Baba.  I had seen it once before but it had been closed.  This time it was open, so we started hunting for a parking spot.  This is the biggest drawback to the place...there is no parking anywhere near it!  We eventually found a gravel lot behind a warehouse that looked sufficiently undisturbed such that we might get away with parking there for lunch.

Samosa Chaat Salad

When we sat down, we were handed the lunch special menu which was disappointingly generically Indian, along with an odd selection of Thai dishes.  I was worried we were in for the typical Nepali Indian interpretation, which is so bland.  I asked the server where they were from and he said Pakistan!  So I asked for the Pakistani menu and was given a different, much more interesting piece of laminated paper to look at.

Korma, dal fry, and tasty veg

We started ordering and were very pleasantly surprised, especially at the flavors in korma and dal fry.  My wife really liked the interesting samosa chaat salad too.  The naan was, sadly, still sweet, and there weren't any interesting breads on the menu other than something that turned out to be a sweet version of the naan.  It was a ton of food and we were both well stuffed by the end.  The only reason it doesn't get an Excellent is the lack of good bread.

A sweet bread that I didn't really care for

I told my wife she no longer has to trick me into going to Ikea, I'll go just to eat here again!