KARACHI: ‘Great Wall’ is the latest eatery to enter Karachi’s vibrant and fast evolving fine dining sector and by now is the only one offering authentic cuisines of Szechuanese and Cantonese origin. ‘Great Wall’ opened its doors for public on 24th December 2018 at Karachi’s emerging food street i.e. Shaheed-e-Millat Road which is now home to some of the trendiest eateries in Karachi. Since its launch ‘Great Wall’ has being doing well this during this festive season.
‘Great Wall’ is a joint-venture by two young and budding entrepreneurs Ammar Jamal and Ahmed Nasir Sarwana and these two were kind enough to spare some time from their very busy schedule to invite the team Biztoday for an informal interactive session about the their venture ‘Great Wall’.
Initially Mr. Jamal Rasheed took over the reins of this session and said; “my son Ammar Jamal has always been very passionate about cooking Chinese cuisines and never misses a chance to prepare some new Chinese for us. Over the passage of time I have seen his passion growing and his keenness to start a Chinese restaurant seemed to grow by every passing day”.
To keep it as simple as possible Mr. Jamal Rasheed said; “idea of opening a Chinese restaurant is originated by Ammar Jamal.
We are then formally introduced to these two young entrepreneurs Ammar Jamal and Ahmed Nasir Sarwana who are responsible for running the ‘Great Wall’ successfully.
From there Ammar Jamal takes the lead and informed us; “we are the only eatery in Karachi offering authentic Szechuanese and Cantonese cuisines in Karachi. We have the best chef from a Master-Chef who has 19 years of experience is preparing Chinese cuisines at well-known places like Jumeirah Lake Towers Dubai & different 5 star restaurants around the globe.
He further added; “our kitchen can be viewed by public and they can also see live cooking, and this is something which not many Chinese restaurants are following. With live kitchen we try to show our emphasis on hygiene and quality of food that is being served to our clients while Our theme is also different from the rest of Chinese restaurants in the city along with our colour scheme that is brass , brown based in combination with jade green”.
On his concluding note Ammar Jamal said; “we at ‘Great Wall’ have a capacity to serve 85 diners at maximum and currently we are serving lunch as well as dinner. We welcome walk-ins as well as reservations and our restaurant is available for corporate / social events with prior booking from our Ala-Carte menu.
Other partner at the ‘Great Wall’ Ahmed Nasir Sarwana himself has also worked initially as management trainee at Lotus Court, Mövenpick Hotel Karachi where he learnt the basics of Chinese cuisines. Ahmed was approached by his family friend Ammar Jamal to start something more challenging and with that idea of ‘Great Wall’ emerged.
Ahmed Nasir Sarwana with his experience spoke about cuisines that are on offer at ‘Great Wall’ and said; “Chinese cuisines vary from region to region and here at Great Wall we are focusing cuisines from Szechuan & Canton. Szechuan cuisine originating in South-Western China emphasizes on bold and strong flavours, which can be termed as spicy in our region, whereas Cantonese cuisines are on the lighter side and is also favourite all around the world”.
Ahmed said; “our main focus is to provide good quality food with most authentic Chinese taste to our customers and to achieve this we only use imported authentic ingredients like sauces and spices of best quality, freshest possible vegetables and fruits for our salads and drinks. For our main courses we use finest quality of meat (chicken, beef & mutton). For fish we use Red Snapper and Pomfret and this is also mentioned on our menu”.
He also added; “our complete dining experience starts with our wide range of soups ranging from normal type of soups to specialized ones like ‘Ten Treasure Seafood Soup’ and ‘Great Wall special Soup’. Followed by our appetisers from which I would certainly recommend ‘Great Wall Prawn Cocktail’. We also have a decent collection of salads and our Dim-sums are also available with chicken, beef, prawns and veggies. We even have a dedicated vegan section for veggies lovers, which we believe is an important section being ignored by many leading Chinese restaurants”.
Ahmed further went on to say; “we have a detailed main course list consisting of five major sections with several options available within Chicken, Beef, Prawns, Fish (Red Snapper & Pomfret) and Mutton. Alongside these meaty options we also have decent grainy options from rice, noodles, chow-mein, lo-mein and chopsuey. On beverages our ‘Great Wall Mocktails’ are very unique and are prepared with fresh fruits and taste exquisitely and I would highly recommend all of them to try once”.
Here Ammar Jamal further added “pretty soon we plan to launch our specially designed signature menu which would be consisting of lobsters, mutton chops in Chinese style to name a few”.
On concluding note both young entrepreneurs Ammar Jamal and Ahmed Nasir Sarwana jointly said; “we want create a name for our restaurant ‘Great Wall’ in fine-dining sector, a name for ourselves and for our families and we can do all this by offering peaceful ambiance, excellent food-quality and hygiene. With that we now look forward to welcome you to serve you best and authentic Szechuanese and Cantonese cuisines”. BIZ TODAY REPORT
