ISLAMABAD: Waiters weave through the busy restaurant floor, hurriedly taking orders from famished customers and making room for plenty of others who amble into the busy Xander’s gourmet café in Islamabad. It has been a little over three months since the restaurant opened for business in Pakistan’s capital. The steady stream of customers suggests it’s here to stay.
This is the story of several restaurants from Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi that have opened their outlets in Islamabad in recent years and found success in the capital. These include Xander’s, Hot N Spicy, Red Apple, Caffe Praha, Student Biryani and others.
These people bring much-needed diversity to the city’s culinary landscape. The southern port city is home to the Memon, Bohra, Punjabi, Pashtun, Baloch, Bengali, Malbari, Sindhi and a large community of MuHajjirs--people who migrated from India at the time of partition. Each group has contributed distinct flavors to Karachi’s ever-evolving palate with their own signature dishes.
But while Karachi has always been famous for its mouthwatering biryani, slow-cooked beef stew popularly known as nihari and the haleem, a thick, savory porridge of meat, lentils, and wheat, Islamabad’s residents did not find the same delight in the capital city’s version of these dishes.
