Pakistani Food is Having a Moment — Where Are Its Restaurants?

In 2020, I wrote a piece, “Pakistani Cuisine is on the Cusp of a Renaissance,” for The Juggernaut. In the article, I pointed to growing awareness of the nuances of South Asian food, heightened global food consciousness and movement in Pakistan’s culinary industry as a sign that Pakistani cuisine was on the precipice of stepping onto the global stage. I might have jumped the gun on that take.

It took eight years after the publication of Sumayya Usmani’s Summers Under the Tamarind Tree, the first internationally published cookbook on Pakistani food, to see another Pakistani cookbook in the global market: Beyond Measure by TikTok sensation Bilal Bhatti. My debut cookbook, Pakistan, and Zareen’s Kitchen by Umair Khan and Zareen Khan of the beloved Bay Area restaurant of the same name, are the first to be published in the US — long after the boom of Indian cookbooks in the country. Outside of publishing, there is still a marked absence of Pakistani fine dining outside of the Michelin-starred New Punjab Club in Hong Kong. Within the country, The East End continues to be the only surviving restaurant giving Pakistani food a higher-end treatment. Today, I’m a lot less certain about whether Pakistani cuisine is on the cusp of a renaissance. In fact, I think we are moving quite slowly.

Pakistani cuisine does have a bigger digital footprint now than it did five years ago. There is an explosion of Pakistani food content — not just creators sharing recipes from their own kitchens, but also more street food and travel content, which shows glimpses of communities that frequently get erased from the conversation about Pakistani food. Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture and the British Council, launched Pakistan’s Museum of Food, the largest exploration of Pakistani cuisine online. Alongside a growing internet presence, we have also seen an uptick in the number of high-quality food products — from panjiri to packaged tadka — that do not mask themselves as Indian in the West. So, while there is greater ownership and pride in Pakistani food, we are not seeing it gain the same momentum in the US that Filipino food did back in 2018 or West African cuisine today. There is also little in Pakistan that restaurants overseas can model themselves after that demonstrates Pakistani cuisine as worth paying top dollar for.

In August, I sat on a panel at the Museum of Food and Drink in Brooklyn with fellow food writers Zainab Shah and Pervaiz Shallwani to talk about Pakistani cuisine in the US. Both pointed to an increase in the number of restaurants serving traditional Pakistani food or food inspired by the founder’s Pakistani roots, such as Shallwani’s own Chaat Dog — a mashup of his Chicago-area upbringing and Pakistani heritage — or Umar and Amena Chaudhry’s Namkeen, which serves Nashville-style chicken coated in Pakistani spices. But, the number of restaurants still seems small in proportion to the size of the Pakistani diaspora and its growing purchasing power.

Kiran Lutfeali, who founded the fast-casual restaurant Kolachi in the East Village with her husband, Saif Qazi, agrees. Even in New York City, where residents are familiar with a wide variety of international cuisine, Lutfeali and Qazi found during their market research that most New Yorkers were not exposed to Pakistani food or Pakistani flavours.

To grow the market size, Lutfeali feels there is a need to encourage non–South Asians to try Pakistani dishes and market them as a delicious product that can satisfy their cravings as much as a smash burger or taco. They felt that the paratha roll was a perfect introduction, since it is a fast and convenient ‘grab and go’ option that is also representative of the flavours they grew up with in Karachi.

Outside of ‘grab and go’ joints, supper clubs are another format that the Pakistani diaspora is using to introduce Pakistani food in the West. As part of my book tour, I partnered with chef and content creator Zainab Sadia Saeed, who founded The Gathering Table in New York and frequently incorporates Pakistani or Pakistan-inspired dishes in her supper club menus. Supper clubs allow chefs to present Pakistani cuisine in an elevated way that mirrors a fine dining experience without any of the overhead costs.

After completing her Grand Diplôme from Le Cordon Bleu in London, founder of the food brand Third Culture Kat, Saliha Khan Sadozai, was eager to change the perception of Pakistani cuisine as being cheap and accessible. She started hosting supper clubs centred around various themes — such as chaat nights and high tea — to present Pakistani food in a higher-end light. “Supper clubs are intimate, personal and flexible. They allow me to experiment with menus and storytelling in ways a restaurant setting can’t,” says Sadozai.

Inside Pakistan, though, the restaurant industry is booming despite the country’s persistent financial crises, however, restaurants continue to repeat the same concepts. In 2017, Elizabeth Kannan opened Wild Thyme, a restaurant serving Hunza cuisine in Islamabad. It was among a handful of restaurants in the country that provided regional cuisine in a modern setting. Despite the bureaucratic hurdles of setting up a restaurant in Pakistan, Wild Thyme thrived until the pandemic forced Kannan to close it. But, the success of Wild Thyme in Islamabad, The East End in Karachi, as well as the growing interest in local culinary retreats — such as those organised by chef Asad Monga or heritage food tours like the Mahigeer boat trip that focuses on the cuisine of the indigenous coastal community in Karachi — signal space even within the Pakistani market for both a more creative and deeper dive into Pakistani dining.

Of course, interest does not always mean commercial success or sustainability. For instance, Kannan struggled to sustain Wild Thyme in Islamabad during the pandemic as an independent restaurateur; her effort to open a second branch in Karimabad fell through. Chef and recipe developer Maria Ajmerwala, who ran Bohra Dastarkhwan — an acclaimed, intimate seven-course Bohra-style dinner — with her husband, Muaffadal Moiz, recently closed because of financial sustainability.

While the Pakistani government has finally begun to seriously consider its cuisine as an export product — for instance, the Trade Development Authority set up an ambitious Global Cuisine Show in November to show how Pakistani ingredients can be integrated into global cuisines — it can also support small restaurant owners and chefs experimenting with Pakistani cuisine and indigenous ingredients domestically as well.

There is also a lingering lack of awareness among the broader public about the full depth and breadth of Pakistani food, despite the uptick in digital content promoting regional cuisine, and a reluctance to pay for it as much as they would at restaurants serving international food.

If, however, we incorporate lessons from the diaspora — such as Saliha Khan Sadozai’s popular Pakistan-themed supper clubs in London, or restaurants like The East End and Wild Thyme that present Pakistani regional cuisine in a fresh format — and couple them with appropriate government support, we may get the additional push we really need to truly usher in a Pakistani food renaissance.