Stop me if you’ve read this complaint here before, but why doesn’t a city the size of Karachi have more decent restaurants? After all, it has a large and thriving middle class to sustain a number of excellent restaurants. But in actual fact, you can count these on the fingers of one hand, and still leave your thumb free.

I am not speaking here of our many wonderful dhabas, tikka-kabab joints, and the specialist desi food eateries in Burns Road and elsewhere. I am talking about places that offer a fine dining experience in a refined atmosphere, with highly trained and experienced chefs using fresh local ingredients, cooking to international standards. Such restaurants require not just a lot of money to establish, but close and expert supervision.

When I asked Ayaz, the owner of an iconic restaurant and a foodie I have long admired, he replied: “A good restaurant is all about passion, but people treat it as an ordinary business that you set up to make money.” At the end of the day, of course this is a business: you have to cover your costs, and make a reasonable profit. But in the rarefied world of fine dining, you are selling more than just food; you are trying to provide your customers with an indefinable feeling of well-being. Your staff has to pamper them, and ensure that they are guided along the menu to get a combination of dishes that will dazzle their taste-buds as well as their eyes, so that when they walk out, they feel their money has been well-spent.

Opening a restaurant involves a lot of money and the turnover may not be great

Clearly, this is not easy to achieve. You need highly trained staff and chefs, and a commitment to excellence. Sadly, far too many of us accept whatever we get, so restaurants don’t have to raise their game. Even though food programmes on TV have become very popular, and there’s greater awareness about good food out there, we still don’t vote with our wallets by refusing to go to mediocre places. And as long as these restaurants continue attracting punters, there’s no incentive for them to improve.

One reason we lag so far behind on the gastronomy league table is that we still consider cooking a menial job to be done by paid staff. Being a chef is hardly a desirable profession in our social hierarchy. So we get mostly semi-educated or illiterate people working in our kitchens. Often, some of them are very talented, and can cook very well. But they will only prepare dishes they have learned from their ustads or the begum sahibs who have hired them. They don’t have any incentive to innovate, and tend to repeat dishes from usually limited repertoires.

In England, two well-off couples we know have sons who have become established as the rising stars of British haute-cuisine. Both started at the bottom after acquiring professional training in well-regarded cookery schools, and are now head chefs at top London restaurants. One of them at the Connaught has two Michelin stars. Both young chefs have received rave reviews. We were taken to the Connaught recently, and the cooking, service and ambience were all taken to a different level.

Colombo, a city a tenth the size of Karachi, has at least half a dozen restaurants that would hold their own anywhere in the world. One difference, of course, is the presence of a sizeable community of diplomats, well-heeled business travellers and tourists. They provide a clientele for upmarket restaurants. And as is often the case, well-to-do Sri Lankans follow their lead. Also, foreign chefs have no problem with moving to Sri Lanka on a short-term contract. Pakistan, due to its security issues is not so fortunate.

In Western restaurants, the rule of thumb is to triple the price of the wine served, and make a profit on the cellar, while breaking even on food. This formula is not an option in Pakistan, obviously, so the menu has to be quite pricey to turn a profit. This limits the number of customers who are willing to pay these prices.

But ultimately, as Ayaz says, it’s all about the passion.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, November 15th, 2015

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