At Khan Saab, anticipation arrives before the first bite. A knife breaks through the golden pastry dome of a biryani, releasing a fragrant rush of steam. A glass cloche is lifted from a tandoor-charred kebab, allowing smoke to curl dramatically across the table. Even a zero-proof cocktail receives a tableside flourish as its marshmallow garnish is toasted over an open flame. The presentation may be theatrical, but the flavors beneath it are anything but superficial.

Newly opened in Santa Monica, Khan Saab Desi Craft Kitchen is an offshoot of the Fullerton restaurant founded in 2020 by chef-partner Imran Ali Mookhi with Ahmad and Iqbal Hosseini. The original became Southern California’s first Michelin-recognized Pakistani restaurant and has retained a Bib Gourmand distinction, awarded for cooking that combines quality with good value. The group has since expanded to Hawaiian Gardens, but its arrival in Santa Monica brings Khan Saab’s particular interpretation of Pakistani and Indian dining considerably closer to Los Angeles’s Westside.

The new restaurant occupies the former home of Tumbi, where Mookhi previously worked, giving the opening a pleasing sense of return rather than simple expansion. Small and intimate, the restaurant offers an inviting main dining room, an outdoor patio and a separate interior space that lends itself particularly well to private gatherings. The scale keeps the experience personal, even when the food arrives with considerable ceremony.

Khan Saab’s 100-percent halal philosophy also means that alcohol is absent, although little feels missing from its unusually ambitious beverage program. These are not apologetic substitutes built from little more than juice and soda, but carefully conceived zero-proof cocktails that use spice, texture and unexpected savory notes to create genuine complexity. The Devil’s Kiss combines passion fruit and lime with jalapeño and Seedlip, moving between tropical sweetness and a measured prickle of heat. The Sunset layers Seedlip with passion fruit, blood orange and San Pellegrino before a marshmallow is toasted tableside, adding smoke, aroma and an element of playfulness.

The standout, however, is the Falsatini, made with Grewia asiatica berries—known throughout South Asia as falsa—and finished with a rim of black salt. Dense and almost purée-like in texture, it walks a fascinating line between sweet and savory. The ripe fruit gives it richness, while the mineral pungency of the salt sharpens each sip. It is unusual, deeply satisfying and easily the most memorable drink of the evening.

That same interplay between refinement and abundance defines the food. Michelin has praised Mookhi’s deft handling of spice and red meat, singling out the restaurant’s beef kebabs, Khan biryani and chicken karahi among its signature dishes. Yet what impresses most is not simply the intensity of the seasoning, but its control. Everything we tasted was rich with spice without allowing heat to overwhelm the other ingredients. Pakistani and Indian traditions are celebrated side by side, each retaining its own character while contributing to a remarkably cohesive menu.

“Pakistani and Indian traditions are celebrated side by side, each retaining its own character while contributing to a remarkably cohesive menu.”

The Khan Biryani, also described as dum biryani, arrives concealed beneath a burnished pastry dome. Cutting through the crust releases the aroma of spiced chicken and fragrant rice, turning the unveiling into part of the pleasure. The pastry is not merely decorative: it seals in the steam and perfume, allowing the dish to reveal itself at the table in a warm, aromatic cloud.

The smoked beef kebab is equally arresting. Top sirloin, generously packed with spices and beautifully charred in the tandoor, arrives beneath a smoke-filled glass dome. Once the cloche is lifted, the smoke escapes around the meat, amplifying the tandoor’s fire and char before the first taste. Beneath the spectacle is a kebab of real substance—deeply seasoned, tender and robust without losing the flavor of the beef itself.

There is comfort, too, in the restaurant’s butter chicken, a house specialty carried over from the days when this address was Tumbi. Silken, mellow and richly sauced, it provides a gentler counterpoint to some of the menu’s more assertive dishes without becoming excessively sweet or heavy.

More forceful is the Peshawari chicken karahi, presented in the large wok in which it has been tossed. Chicken, tomato and spices form a thick, concentrated sauce, punctuated by blistered shishito peppers that introduce freshness and a flicker of heat. It is generous, aromatic and unapologetically full-flavored—the sort of dish that seems to deepen with every spoonful.

Khan Saab clearly understands the modern appetite for spectacle, but it rarely allows presentation to become an end in itself. The pastry dome preserves fragrance. The smoke reinforces the tandoor. The wok conveys both heat and generosity. Even the toasted marshmallow contributes aroma to the Sunset. Each flourish prepares the senses for what follows rather than distracting from it. That distinction matters. South Asian food has too often been confined in the American imagination to the casual and familiar, praised for abundance but not always granted the same consideration of craft, atmosphere and presentation afforded to other celebrated cuisines. Khan Saab does not refine Pakistani and Indian cooking by diluting it. Instead, it surrounds those traditions with the confidence, care and sense of occasion they deserve.

The result is an intimate restaurant with a surprisingly expansive personality: warm enough for an unhurried dinner, adaptable enough for a private celebration and inventive enough to make familiar dishes feel newly discovered. At Khan Saab, dinner may arrive under pastry, smoke or flame, but once the theater clears, it is the depth and precision of the flavors that remain.

— Ghalib Dhalla

Khan Saab Desi Craft Kitchen
115 Santa Monica Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90401
(424) 744-8001

Hours: Monday–Friday, 4–10:30 p.m.; Saturday–Sunday, 2–10:30 p.m.
Website: khansaabus.com