KARACHI: It is often remarked that most of the city looks forward to January for two particular reasons — the weather and the Karachi Eat Festival (KEF). There is some truth to that statement considering the festival, launched in 2014, has swelled to a scale that finding a reasonable expanse of public space to contain it has become quite a struggle for organisers.

Built around the idea of creating a common platform for people who love food, KEF, which opens today (Friday), is an open for all annual festival that has the city’s established food outlets and restaurants, alongside home-based, budding ‘foodpreneurs’, vying to make a mark in the appetites of foodies that throng the festival each year and never seem to be satiated.

Omar Omari of CKO Event Architecture, the brains behind the festival, spoke to Dawn about the changes the KEF 2019 is bringing to the city.

“With around 95 food stalls this year, almost 56 are of home cooks, or budding foodpreneurs, who don’t have restaurants of their own, who are the real gems of the festival,” he said.

Over 400 applicants applied for a stall this year but Omari explained how they changed the selection process to ensure greater quality control, and also to set apart the KEF from other food festivals, where the food has always been the star. “Every applicant was asked to come up with one special item or dish that is not usually available or offered at their restaurant or menu, and has been carefully curated for the KEF as a special entry.”

Omari and his team sat down with the applicants, discussed and tweaked the entries, even coming up with original quirky names for the dishes. A food jury then independently judged the dishes — not knowing who had created it — on the basis of food innovation, food quality, presentation, and of course value for money. The exercise saw an interesting menu cropping up including glittering churros and red chilli tacos, definitely not for the faint-hearted, and many more.

Previous years have seen the festival being hosted in the Frere Gardens, which led to hours-long traffic jams; despite the venue being central to the city, and allowing greater accessibility to Karachiites coming from different parts of the city, a decision was made to not inconvenience the public. The KEF was hosted in 2018 at the Benazir Bhutto Park however, that too could not be an appropriate venue for the large turnout due to its restrictive design.

This year the festival is being held at the Beach Park in Clifton which boasts of a larger space for the crowds to navigate and better parking facilities, said Omari.

A few things those attending need to take into consideration before making the trip this year: People need to own the space they frequent, said Omari, and getting people aware about different parts of the city and activating public spaces is a challenge. “With numbers expected to be over 150,000, there are bound to be longer waits. Be prepared to wait in line. Enjoy the space provided, sit on the grass, stand or loiter. Learn how to behave in a public place as do others around the world.”

A parking map, event layout and stalls list is provided on the Facebook page of the festival.

The KEF 2019 will start on Friday from 4pm to 10.30pm, and Saturday and Sunday, 12.30pm to 10.30pm.

Published in Dawn, January 11th, 2019