Kashmir is a small restaurant specialising in Kashmiri cuisine. A rarity in Singapore, Kashmiri cuisine contains influences from diverse influences – Hindu, Buddhist, Afghan, Mughal, Sikh and British. Here you can find Kashmiri muslim food, Kashmiri Hindu food, as well as North Indian cuisine.

The restaurant seats about 40 and is furnished with dark wood with warm lighting. Before you eat, the wait staff will ask you to wash your hands at the table, pouring water from a container (Tashtri). Specialties are indicated by a maple leaf symbol on the menu (apparently common in the Kashmir valley). When in Kashmir, try the specialties!

Kabargah - "Ribs of lamb boiled in milk with kashmiri spices and fried" - is a good starter as the portion isn't big. Rohit the owner advised us to try eating it with our hands, instead of the fork. This had a nice blend of spices infused into the lamb, making for lovely flavours.

Kokkar roganjosh - "Chicken in harmony with onions and tomatoes flavored with aniseed" - two pieces of chicken served in gravy. For someone who doesn't really like to order chicken, this was a decent spicy chicken dish.

Mixed vegetable - "Assorted veggies cooked with chef’s secret condiments" - provided about 5 varieties of colourful fresh vegetables, and as with Indian cuisine, none of the leafy types. Cooked together with spices but without much gravy, this came out in a pleasant way.

Akhroat Ka Raita - "A rich combination of curd and walnuts" - was an interesting find, with a strong taste of walnuts in a curd style raita. I haven't seen this around, and must say this provided a good balance to the other items.

Kashmiri pulao - "Long grain rice cooked in perfect harmony with nuts, saffron & kevra" - came in a big portion for $6. You might want to go easy on other carbs like naan if you order this.

Roomali roti - a thin handkerchief type flatbread that I always try to order in an Indian restaurant. I might try the more interesting Chilly cheese naan next time.

Stuffed with all that, plus two lassi for only $59, it left no room for dessert. I was looking forward to trying the pista kulfi but it will have to wait.

I spied several tables ordering a sizzling Afghani Murg, which smelt and looked really good, so I might try that next time as well. There is also a decent vegetarian selection.

Service staff, led by Rohit, are very polite, friendly and efficient, well trained by the owners who have much experience in the hotel and F&B industry in India. With its decent prices, this is certainly a good find for rare cuisine.

The website of Kashmir makes a very confident claim that once one has visited the place, said person will add them to their personal list of best restaurants in this country and will subsequently come back for more. I thought that was a rather bold statement, but hindsight has told me that the claim, is probably not very far from the truth. This is one of those places which I left happy and telling myself that I'll like to come back again. This is definitely not the first time I've gotten such a feel about a restaurant, but I would say that one that inspires as such, is not the majority.

We started off with some really good kabargah. This was basically lamb ribs that was boiled in milk and spices before being deep fried. There wasn't a lot of meat for a $12 portion, but what was available was definitely very nicely done. The resultant dish retained the aroma of its meat and was quite tender to boot. I could have finished two portions of these easily by myself.

I'm very impressed with this Afghani murg which is basically chicken that's marinated in almond paste, cream, some ginger and garlic before being charcoal grilled on skewers. Marked with very nice char terrain on the surface and surprisingly juicy on the insides, the robust char aroma could just be described as....beautiful. It certainly was good with all that moist meat and half a chicken ($12) felt a little too small. The is seriously good stuff with two thumbs up to the chef.

I ordered the chilly cheese naan for novelty's sake of trying another rendition of naans and their stuffings and it turned out to be pretty good. The crumbly cheese that was used was unexpectedly light in flavor and the naan was highlighted in each bite with the bits of raw sliced green chillis.

The malai kofta turned out to be a mixed bag of a very good and sweetish creamy sauce of saffron and cashew which contains a couple of what is described as cheese dumplings. It's a mixed bag because the gravy didn't taste too nutty or retain much of the saffron flavoring, but it was still good in its own ways, especially as a dip for the naan. Those cheese dumplings didn't taste anything that I knew of cheese at all. Even after having numerous experiences with cheese in Indian restaurants, this one takes the cake of being the weirdest tasting one with a texture that reminded me of sweet potatoes.

Known as 'Honeymoon' on the menu, there was a dessert which was basically a gulab jamun served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Gulab jamuns were basically my first introductions to Indian desserts and have thus made me a little wary of them since there were mostly sweet to the point that I consider excessive. Adding vanilla ice cream seems to have pushed back all the sweetness and yes, despite it being very sweet still, this was really good. Hot ball of spiced thing with the cold ice cream, I'm sure one can just imagine.

There was also a phirni, which is basically a steamed semolina based dessert that feels like a very soft pudding with the texture of many mini sago. The added sliced nuts didn't really do much to enhance the flavor than the texture of each mouthful. Great stuff as well. It's not so common that I find myself truely pleased by sweet endings.

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