wild rice

wild rice
serena hotel (khayaban-e-suhrawardy, islamabad)
tel: 051-287-4000

what was consumed: east (chinese and japanese) and south east asian favorites! fried spring rolls, tom yum soup, kung pao chicken, salads, noodles, etc. so many bites of delicious food! but no papaya salad (they didn't have it, not that it wasn't on the menu) :( and, really, only bites because there were so many of us! still - works for me.

the ladies' dinners strike again! with everyone back from holiday, and before others go out, the ladies got together to have a nice dinner. so many folks come to wild rice for work-related activities, but this was my first time! the first for a few of us, in face. i was ready.

wild rice sat us in a nice back corner, maybe because we were so large, maybe because we were a bunch of women, who knows. it was fine for us, though. we looked through the menu and were overwhelmed with the options. they have a nice sampling of dishes from all over "asia," interesting only in that i thought it was a thai restaurant (not sure where i got that idea). we decided that we'd all pick one and share. works for me! we ended up with a hodge podge of stuff - chinese kung pao chicken, japanese sushi rolls, thai soups and salads, indonesian noodles ...

the service was also quite good - the servers know what they're doing. that said, we had a big group and our server was overwhelmed (and we could see it). still, he slapped a smile on his face and did the best job he could. that's all we ask! fab job!

people who'd been here before say that they haven't had anything they didn't like. and i believe it! i'll have to go back to try more. happy eating!

online: http://www.serenahotels.com/serenaislamabad/dining-en.html

al maghreb

al maghreb
serena hotel, islamabad, pakistan
tel: 051-2874000

what was consumed: tabbouleh, fatoosh, hummus, chicken tagine

there are quite a few quick eats options in islamabad. similarly, there are quite a few nice-ish sit down restaurants. most of them are in hotels (turns out, that's a thing here too). i'm just glad that they exist.

BJL and i decided to go out for a nice-ish dinner, so head to the serena hotel's al maghreb for some middle eastern cuisine.

to make a gross generalization, pakistanis eat dinner really late. so when we arrived at al maghreb, we were literally the only ones there. no problem - we were immediately seated and service was top notch.

we chose a variety of dishes, many of which were our favorites when we were serving in the middle east. so we knew exactly what we wanted, but could also be highly disappointed (can't help but to have high expectations). lucky for us, our expectations were met and we enjoyed delicious middle eastern cuisine. YUM. 

online: http://www.serenahotels.com/serenaislamabad/dining-en.html