---
type: Video
title: "BEST Restaurant In Islamabad (Monal) 🇵🇰"
description: Dinner up in the Margalla Hills over the lights of Islamabad, a taxi fare argued down by a passing stranger, and friends from Karachi who settle the bill in secret.
tags: [pakistan, islamabad, restaurants, haggling, hospitality, views]
timestamp: 2026-08-06T12:00:00Z
resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1fRwTJKcVc
video_id: g1fRwTJKcVc
upload_date: 2021-12-29
duration: 906
---

# BEST Restaurant In Islamabad (Monal) 🇵🇰

Dinner at Monal, high in the hills above [Islamabad](/places/islamabad.md), with
[Mac](/people/mac.md) and the friends they had made weeks earlier in
[Karachi](/places/karachi.md), who have travelled up.

Two things happen worth recording. **A stranger takes over the taxi
negotiation** — asked 2,000 rupees against an app price of 895, Harry starts
working the rank, and a passer-by steps in and argues on his behalf until
somebody sensible takes the job. And at the end, **the friends from Karachi pay
the bill without telling anyone**, so Harry doesn't know to this day what the
meal cost.

The restaurant itself is up a long series of switchbacks with the whole city
laid out below it, which he says the camera can't capture and asks the viewer to
take on trust.

*Obs: this page is based on auto-generated subtitles; amounts the transcript
leaves ambiguous are marked unverified.*

## Key moments

- [00:00] **2,000 rupees asked for the ride; Uber says 895.** Harry's response is
  that he is in no rush and will work down the rank until someone is reasonable —
  the clearest statement of his method in the cluster.
- [01:36] A stranger with no stake in it takes over the negotiation on his behalf.
- [03:44] He pays 2,000 in the end anyway (from video – unverified), on the
  grounds that the driver who took them was decent and the road up is long,
  winding and hard work.
- [02:43] The drive up: switchbacks into the Margalla Hills with the city
  spreading out flat and lit behind.
- [05:27] **Security on the door**: bags searched, and his drone refused entry —
  he wasn't intending to fly it and couldn't explain that through the language
  gap.
- [07:30] **Chicken karahi** and a second chicken dish, with chapati and garlic
  naan. He is taught to scoop with the bread rather than use cutlery, and rates
  the garlic naan good enough to eat on its own.
- [10:42] **Chocolate molten lava cake**, his first ever, eaten with ice cream on
  the strength of Mac's insistence — the hot-and-cold, hard-and-gooey contrast is
  what he singles out.
- [13:28] **Gulab jamun** to finish: very soft, very sweet, warm.
- [13:59] **The bill is already paid.** Their Karachi friends settled it quietly
  while they were eating dessert.

## Extracted pages

- [Islamabad](/places/islamabad.md)
- [Karachi](/places/karachi.md)
- [Pakistan](/countries/pakistan.md)
- [Mac](/people/mac.md)
- [Insist on paying](/tips/insist-on-paying.md)