By Kamran Hashim/Rafiq Vayani
KARACHI: The 7th edition of Karachi Eat Food Festival commonly known Karachi Eat 2020 was held at Beach View Park, Clifton from 10th January 2020 and went on till 12th January 2020. Karachi Eat is owned by CKO Event Architecture is getting bigger, better and well recognized brand among Karachi’s eatery circles.
On Friday 10th of January 2020, we decided to head towards Karachi Eat on very breezy winter evening, which was quite cold as per Karachi’s standard. Most of the aspects that were lacking last year seemed covered up this year at 07th edition of Karachi Eat 2020. We got to see a well developed parking space against the bumpy ground from last year and this year it was vast and well lit up during night-time. After parking we headed towards the entrance, which seemed very well managed. Arrangement at the entrance also seemed to be near perfect.
On enquiring we were guided to media desk where Ms. Irum Ali from Mind Maps Communications greeted us with a broad smile. She was kind enough to inform us that this year’s which is also the seventh edition of Karachi Eat will boast around 115 eateries, all of which were carefully curated by their food-jury from 300 applicants wanting to be a part of this year’s edition; all the eateries and their dishes were marked according to taste, cost, practicality and presentation.
Ms. Irum Ali was also kind enough to inform us that the organizers CKO Event Architecture is a firm jointly owned by three young entrepreneurs Sara Chapra, Omar Omari and Aslam Khan and its turning out to be one of most sought after event planner because of their new innovative ideas that can be viewed by their clients and gets appreciations all over. Their product ‘Karachi Eat’ has become one of the most recognized brand within Karachi’s ever growing and evolving eatery circles.
She also informed us that official BBQ Pit partner is ‘Shan‘, official beverage partner is ‘7up’, official tea partner is ‘Mezan Tea’, official biscuit partner is ‘LU’, official chocolate partner ‘Cadbury Dairy Milk’, official hygiene partner ‘Lifebouy’, official washing-powder partner ‘Ariel’, official health partner ‘Sensodyne’, official health partner ‘Hashmani’, official media partner ‘Geo’ & official radio partner ‘FM91’.
After a very brief introduction to organizers, sponsors and eateries present at Karachi Eat 2020, we were finally ready to begin our tour.
There were three rows of stalls and we opted to start from the centre row which had large size stalls. Our first stop was at Cadbury Dairy Milk’s stall where Chef Abdul Hadi Co-founder at Master-Class Pakistan Hospitality Business School was present with his team of chef and was preparing some very excellent tasting confectionary & dessert items for us. Best of the best dessert that we tasted during our visit to Karachi Eat 2020 was desi dessert ‘maalpura’ served with hot molten Diary Milk Chocolate. This ‘chocolate maalpura’ for me was the winner of Karachi Eat 2020. At Diary Milk’s stall there were other items like ‘walnut tart stuffed with chocolate’ and ‘creamy puff dipped in chocolate’ but none of them could beat the taste of ‘chocolate maalpura’. Dairy Milk did live upto their slogan which was “kuch acha hojaye, kuch meetha hojaye”.
‘Kuiya – the art of Potato’ were serving Potatoes is all sorts of styles. They specialized in presenting Potato in its conventional ways also in un-conventional desi styles like Kuiya. CEO of Kuiya Mr. Mujtaba Haider Afaq said; we make amazing foods items in Karachi. According to Mr. Mujtaba Haider Afaq, Kuiya mostly prefers to serve for events with bookings mostly online, but can also deliver at your site through their delivery riders, Bykea & Food Panda. They have been in business for four years now. All of their desi & conventional items are prepared from spices that they prepare in-house and these preparations of spices date back to the times of mughal era. Kuiya took this opportunity to launch their spices by the name of ‘Kuiya – the art of spices’ or Kuiya Masala.
Spic-O-getti being next was another home based online eatery available for delivery only in most parts of Karachi was our next destination and we went there for a tasting session. We tasted their signature dishes ‘Khausa’ in chicken along with their ‘Singaporean Rice’ (Chicken) and new entrée “Chic ‘n’ Cheese Spaghetti”. “Chic ‘n’ Cheese Spaghetti” was defiantly the winner among these three and is highly recommended. Cheesy texture was too rich with low spices and this turned out to be good combination and gave it a heavenly taste. We were told that this home based online eatery is run by three sisters and they are sure doing a good job.
After so hype that was created for Butter Beer at last Karachi Eat, I immediately rushed to Sol’s stall and got hold of their now famous Butter Beer. Wasn’t up that hype that was in mind since last year when they ran out of stock.
Dumba Club was serving lamb chops & also claimed to serve optimum prawns. Portion of Lamb Chops served too small and on all three days I couldn’t succeed tasting their prawns as they were always out-of-stock.
SlamVich as always were serving one of best and finest sandwiches in Karachi. I doubt that anyone can match their quality, taste & quantity. Like always they were spot-on.
About Sugar Drizzle, I didn’t try their cookies but their hoarding said “abs aren’t made in kitchen, but cookies are”, was one of the best advertising that I had seen all day.
A very dear friend recommended Kichdri Express, but reaching there, didn’t find their presentation appealing enough so decided to opt against trying Kichdri Express. Some friends wanted to try Original-Zafarani-Chai, 2-guys 1-grll, Dirty-Dogs but we couldn’t due to over-crowding or some other unappealing reasons. Music line-up this year as impressive as it use to be. Some of big names in desi music like Josh from Canada were here to perform their hit numbers and RDB had flown in all the way from UK for perform their desi-punjabi hit numbers.
